| Volume 25 Issue 3 - Publication Date: 1 March 2006 |
| |
| Fast BipedWalking with a Sensor-driven
Neuronal Controller and Real-time Online Learning |
| |
| T, Geng Department
of Psychology, University of Stirling, Stirling, UK, B. Porr
Department of Electronics & Electrical Engineering, University of
Glasgow, UK, and F. Wörgötter Department of Psychology,
University of Stirling, Stirling, UK, and Bernstein Center for Computational
Neuroscience University of Göttingen, Germany |
| |
| In this paper, we present our
design and experiments on a planar biped robot under the control of a pure
sensor-driven controller. This design has some special mechanical features,
for example small curved feet allowing rolling action and a properly positioned
center of mass, that facilitate fast walking through exploitation of the
robot’s natural dynamics. Our sensor-driven controller is built with
biologically inspired sensor- and motor-neuron models, and does not employ
any kind of position or trajectory tracking control algorithm. Instead,
it allows our biped robot to exploit its own natural dynamics during critical
stages of its walking gait cycle. Due to the interaction between the sensor-driven
neuronal controller and the properly designed mechanics of the robot, the
biped robot can realize stable dynamic walking gaits in a large domain of
the neuronal parameters. In addition, this structure allows the use of a
policy gradient reinforcement learning algorithm to tune the parameters
of the sensor-driven controller in real-time, during walking. This way RunBot
can reach a relative speed of 3.5 leg lengths per second after only a few
minutes of online learning, which is faster than that of any other biped
robot, and is also comparable to the fastest relative speed of human walking. |
| |
| Multimedia Key |
= Video |
 = Data |
= Code |
= Image |
|
| |
|
Extension |
Type |
Description |
|
1 |
|
Example
1: Changing speed on the fly. (4.9 MB) |
|
2 |
|
Example
2: Online learning experiment of RunBot (17.9 MB) |
|
| |
| Return
to Contents |
