Design method of brachitation controller based on virtual holonomic constraint

This paper describes an energy-efficient swing-back control for the brachiation robot. In our previous work, the brachiation controller is composed of two actions: swing- back and locomotion. The purpose of swing-back is to excite a robot so as to achieve the locomotion successfully, while locomotion action is to move forward by releasing the ladder with the backward arm in the direction of locomotion and gripping the target ladder with another arm. However, the conventional swing-back control does not consider energy efficiency. Thus, a novel method to achieve an energy-efficient brachiation by exacting a swing-back during locomotion is proposed. Experimental results show that the proposed method can improve the locomotion action as much as over 30% in energy consumption.