Emergence of hysteresis in gait transition by changing walking speed of an oscillator-driven quadruped robot

Abstract

This study investigated the locomotion of a quadruped robot. The leg motions are generated by nonlinear oscillators using phase resetting. We conducted the numerical simulation and showed that the robot produces various gait patterns through dynamical interactions among the robot mechanical system, oscillator control system, and environment and achieves gait transition by changing the walking speed. Furthermore, we demonstrated that a hysteresis with respect to gait pattern appears during the gait transition similarly to humans and animals, and we examined the mechanisms of the hysteresis from a dynamic viewpoint.