This book, by a leading authority on legged locomotion, presents exciting engineering and science, along with fascinating implications for theories of human motor control. It lays fundamental groundwork in legged locomotion, one of the least developed areas of robotics, addressing the possibility of building useful legged robots that run and balance. The book describes the study of physical machines that run and balance on just one leg, including analysis, computer simulation, and laboratory experiments. Contrary to expectations, it reveals that control of such machines is not particularly difficult. It describes how the principles of locomotion discovered with one leg can be extended to systems with several legs and reports preliminary experiments with a quadruped machine that runs using these principles. Raibert's work is unique in its emphasis on dynamics and active balance, aspects of the problem that have played a minor role in most previous work. His studies focus on the central issues of balance and dynamic control, while avoiding several problems that have dominated previous research on legged machines. Marc Raibert is Associate Professor of Computer Science and Robotics at Carnegie-Mellon University and on the editorial board of The MIT Press journal, Robotics Research. Legged Robots That Balanceis fifteenth in the Artificial Intelligence Series, edited by Patrick Winston and Michael Brady.

Bioinspired Legged Locomotion: Models, Concepts, Control and Applications explores the universe of legged robots, bringing in perspectives from engineering, biology, motion science, and medicine to provide a comprehensive overview of the field. With comprehensive coverage, each chapter brings outlines, and an abstract, introduction, new developments, and a summary. Beginning with bio-inspired locomotion concepts, the book's editors present a thorough review of current literature that is followed by a more detailed view of bouncing, swinging, and balancing, the three fundamental sub functions of locomotion. This part is closed with a presentation of conceptual models for locomotion. Next, the book explores bio-inspired body design, discussing the concepts of motion control, stability, efficiency, and robustness. The morphology of legged robots follows this discussion, including biped and quadruped designs. Finally, a section on high-level control and applications discusses neuromuscular models, closing the book with examples of applications and discussions of performance, efficiency, and robustness. At the end, the editors share their perspective on the future directions of each area, presenting state-of-the-art knowledge on the subject using a structured and consistent approach that will help researchers in both academia and industry formulate a better understanding of bioinspired legged robotic locomotion and quickly apply the concepts in research or products. Presents state-of-the-art control approaches with biological relevance Provides a thorough understanding of the principles of organization of biological locomotion Teaches the organization of complex systems based on low-dimensional motion concepts/control Acts as a guideline reference for future robots/assistive devices with legged architecture Includes a selective bibliography on the most relevant published articles

Walking machines have advantages over traditional vehicles, and have already accomplished tasks that wheeled or tracked robots cannot handle. Nevertheless, their use in industry and services is currently limited in scope. This book brings together methods and techniques that have been developed to deal with obstacles to wider acceptance of legged robots. Part I provides an historical overview. Part II concentrates on control techniques, as applied to Four-legged robots.

The first chapter of this book traces the history of the development of walking machines from the original ideas of man-amplifiers and military rough-ground transport to today's diverse academic and industrial research and development projects. It concludes with a brief account of research on other unusual methods of locomotion. The heart of the book is the next three chapters on the theory and engineering of legged robots. Chapter 2 presents the basics of land loco motion, going on to consider the energetics of legged movement and the description and classification of gaits. Chapter 3, dealing with the mechanics of legged vehicles, goes into leg number and arrangement, and discusses mechanical design and actuation methods. Chapter 4 deals with analysis and control, describing the aims of control theory and the methods of modelling and control which have been used for both highly dynamic robots and multi-legged machines. Having dealt with the theory of control it is necessary to discuss the computing system on which control is to be implemented. This is done in Chapter 5, which covers architectures, sensing, algorithms and pro gramming languages. Chapter 6 brings together the threads of the theory and engineering discussed in earlier chapters and summarizes the current walking machine research projects. Finally, the applications, both actual and potential, of legged locomotion are described. Introduction Research into legged machines is expanding rapidly. There are several reasons why this is happening at this particular time.

This book aims at providing algorithms for balance control of legged, torque-controlled humanoid robots. A humanoid robot normally uses the feet for locomotion. This paradigm is extended by addressing the challenge of multi-contact balancing, which allows a humanoid robot to exploit an arbitrary number of contacts for support. Using multiple contacts increases the size of the support polygon, which in turn leads to an increased robustness of the stance and to an increased kinematic workspace of the robot. Both are important features for facilitating a transition of humanoid robots from research laboratories to real-world applications, where they are confronted with multiple challenging scenarios, such as climbing stairs and ladders, traversing debris, handling heavy loads, or working in confined spaces. The distribution of forces and torques among the multiple contacts is a challenging aspect of the problem, which arises from the closed kinematic chain given by the robot and its environment.

Mechanical engineering, an engineering discipline borne of the needs of the industrial revolution, is once again asked to do its substantial share in the call for industrial renewal. The general call is urgent as we face profound is sues of productivity and competitiveness that require engineering solutions, among others. The Mechanical Engineering Series features graduate texts and research monographs intended to address the need for information in contemporary areas of mechanical engineering. The series is conceived as a comprehensive one that covers a broad range of concentrations important to mechanical engineering graduate education and research. We are fortunate to have a distinguished rost er of consulting editors on the advisory board, each an expert in one the areas of concentra tion. The names of the consulting editors are listed on the next page of this volume. The areas of concentration are: applied mechanics; biome chan ics; computational mechanics; dynamic systems and control; energetics; mechanics of materials; processing; thermal science; and tribology.

This book presents a unique examination of mobile robots and embedded systems, from introductory to intermediate level. It is structured in three parts, dealing with Embedded Systems (hardware and software design, actuators, sensors, PID control, multitasking), Mobile Robot Design (driving, balancing, walking, and flying robots), and Mobile Robot Applications (mapping, robot soccer, genetic algorithms, neural networks, behavior-based systems, and simulation). The book is written as a text for courses in computer science, computer engineering, IT, electronic engineering, and mechatronics, as well as a guide for robot hobbyists and researchers.