Bipedal locomotion control with rhythmic neural oscillators

A biologically inspired locomotion control design approach is presented which is based on a mutually inhibited neural oscillator model. The entrainment between the dynamics of neural oscillators and the natural dynamics of the plant is very important for neural oscillator driven rhythmic control. A systematic design approach for rhythmic control is studied in the paper. First, the global system dynamics is divided into two separate parts, namely, the dynamics of neural oscillators and the natural dynamics of the controlled plant. Second, a compensator block is proposed to shape the natural dynamics of the plant so that the global dynamic entrainment and the desired plant motion can be achieved more easily. Furthermore, a design guideline for global dynamic entrainment is given. Finally, the design approach is applied to bipedal locomotion control of a simulated walking robot. The simulation results are also presented in the paper