Sensor-based control of the reactive behaviors of walking machines

This paper addresses the problem of reactive behaviors of a fast walking robot moving in unknown and dynamic environments. This robot, named WAAL (walking autonomous artificial locust) has 6 active degrees of freedom controlled by two transputers. It interacts with its environment through a 3-sensor ultrasonic system and artificial whiskers. The authors have developed a hardware and software architecture in order to make this machine able to avoid collisions with the obstacles of its unstructured environment. The authors´ approach of reactivity is based on the description of a virtual deformable risk zone surrounding the robot. The deformations of this zone, due to the intrusion of proximity informations, control the robot reactions