Control techniques for walking robots

This article presents the application of three control techniques to a 7 DOF walking robot consisting of five actuators. In this study we focus on the motion control with respect to the sagittal plane. The gait pattern of the biped robot is given and its dynamic model together with the controller are used in closed loop. The considered controllers are: a PD modification using a gain-varying exponential term that is our contribution, a classical proportional-derivative (PD) controller and a PD-fuzzy controller. The advantages and disadvantages of each of these controllers are highlighted when facing the challenging task of controlling the motion of a walking robot.