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4:00pm, Adamson Wing, Baker Hall
Abstract
This talk will present recent advances by the speaker and his students in
the area of design and control of dynamically stable legged robots. The
principle of passive dynamics was harnessed via suitable controls for the
compliant hip joint of our ARL Monopod, a planar one-legged hopping robot.
Combined with the leg compliance, the average (total) mechanical energy
expenditure was reduced to a mere 64 W at a running speed of 1 m/s. We
will also report on a new quadruped design and control project. The goal is
to derive stable and robust controllers which permit the use of legs with
minimum mechanical complexity, yet feature a rich set of robot behaviors.
The control framework will be described and preliminary experimental
results demonstrated, via our prototype quadruped, SCOUT-1. It walks,
turns, and can climb a step, all in a dynamically stable fashion.
Simulation results show the possibility of stair climbing, and running.
Biographical Sketch
Martin Buehler received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical
engineering from Yale University in 1985 and 1990, respectively. From
1990-1991 he was a post-doctoral associate in the MIT AI Lab. He is currently
an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at McGill
University. His research interests are in the area of robot manipulation and
legged locomotion. He held a junior Industrial Research Chair from 1991-1995,
is presently a Project Leader in the Federal Network of Centres of
Excellence, and a Scholar of the Canadian Institute for Advanced
Research.
For appointments, please contact the host, Sanjiv Singh, at ssingh@frc.ri.cmu.edu
The RI Seminar Home Page: www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~mcm/seminar.html
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