A Study on the Brachiation Type of Mobile Robot. 5th Report. Experimental Oscillation and Locomotion Control of a 2-Link BMR.

Abstract

This paper deals with the problem of controlling the brachiation robot (BMR), which moves dynamically from branch to branch like a gibbon swinging its body in a pendulum fashion. In the previous reports, we proposed a control method for BMR, which consists of heuristic learning to generate feedforward driving torques and the trajectory and arm-direction feedback control, and confirmed that the proposed method can achieve locomotion of the 2-link BMR in simulations. In this paper, an experimental model of the 2-link BMR is presented and some experiments are carried out using it to realize its locomotion. A method to control the oscillation amplitude of the BMR will also be addressed, and some motions such as catching a branch from a pendant state and recovering from a miss locomotion are realized.