A comparison of three insect-inspired locomotion controllers

Biologically Inspired Robots

“…Investigators have also employed the concept of distributed control, that is, that gait is generated by an interaction of CPGs controlling different legs or even different joints of single legs, and the feedback from sensors in the legs (e.g., Beer et al, 1992;Chiel et al, 1992;Dean et al, 1999;Kindermann, 2001). Underappreciated work by Ferrell (1995) compared the performance of various models of locomotor control. Complementing work on biomechanics and controllers is research on actuators.…”

“…A truly biomimetic robot ought to be able to continue to perform in spite of such drastic injury. Fault tolerance was considered theoretically by Ferrell (1995) and implemented in a distributed controller on a robot by Chiel et al (1992). The topic has received more attention in recent years, with studies of faults ranging from simple joint malfunction to loss of one or more legs.…”

“…This includes controllers for insects (Arena et al, 2004;Beer et al, 1992;Dean et al, 1999), other arthropods (Ayers &Witting, 2007), andvertebrates (Fukuota et al, 2003;Ijspeert et al, 2005). Ferrell evaluated several different designs of controllers (Ferrell, 1995). The popularity of the approach is a reflection of its success in being able to control the complexity of legged locomotion.…”

Complex-order dynamics in hexapod locomotion

“…Previous studies focused mainly in the control at the leg level and leg coordination using neural networks [4], fuzzy logic [4,5], hybrid force/position control [6] and subsumption architecture [7,8]. There is also a growing interest in using insect locomotion schemes to control walking robots at the leg level and leg coordination [9][10][11][12][13][14]. Nevertheless, the control at the joint level is almost always implemented using a PD or a PID scheme.…”

A Reflexive Neural Network for Dynamic Biped Walking Control

“…Thus, such a distributed structure can immensely decrease the computational burden of the locomotion controller. With these eminent advantages, Cruse's reflexive controller and its variants had been implemented on some multi-legged robots (Ferrell, 1995). Whereas in the case of biped robots, though some of them also exploit some form of reflexive mechanisms, their reflexes usually work as an auxiliary function or as infrastructural units for other non-reflexive high-level or parallel controllers.…”