Control experiments on an underactuated robot with application to legged locomotion

Abstract

Underactuated mechanisms provide significant challenges to the control engineer. In this paper a nonlinear tracking controller is applied to the underactuated Acrobot, a double pendulum with an actuator at only the second joint. Tracking of oscillatory trajectories with joint angle magnitude up to 85/spl deg/ was achieved. Applications to one-legged robot locomotion are described.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>