Postural Control on a Quadruped Robot Using Lateral Tilt: A Dynamical System Approach

Autonomous adaptive locomotion over irregular terrain is one important topic in robotics research. Postural control, meaning movement generation for robot legs in order to attain balance, is a first step in this direction. In this article, we focus on the essential issue of modeling the interaction between the central nervous system and the peripheral information in the locomotion context. This issue is crucial for autonomous and adaptive control, and has received little attention so far. This modeling is based on the concept of dynamical systems whose intrinsic robustness against perturbations allows for an easy integration of sensory-motor feedback and thus for closed-loop control. Herein, we focus on achieving balance without locomotion.