Oscillator-controlled bipedal walker with pneumatic actuators

Abstract

The development of an oscillator controller for a bipedal robot with antagonistic pairs of pneumatic actuators is reported. Periodic motions of the legs switch between the swinging and supporting stages based on the phase of the oscillators. The oscillators receive touch sensor signals at the end of the legs as feedback when the leg touches the ground and compose a steady limit cycle of the total periodic dynamics of bipedal locomotion. The effectiveness and performance of the proposed controller were evaluated with numerical simulations and experiments with the hardware.