ATTITUDE AND POSITION CONTROL FOR NONRIGID WALKING MACHINES

This paper deals with mechanical problems that appear in realistic wal king machines. Flexion in links and joints produces a change in body a ttitude and position which must be corrected. This phenomenon is diffi cult to model, therefore, sensors must be used. This paper proposes an attitude/position control strategy for a walker that uses a class of periodic gaits known as wave-crab gaits. To perform this controlling a ction, sensors such as contact sensors, inclinometers and joint positi on sensors are employed. The main point of this paper is to analyze th e phenomenon and to describe the proposed algorithms and the experimen tal results obtained with a quadruped walking machine named RIMHO. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.