NPL : a graphical programming language for motor control and its application to bipedal walking

Current methods for bipedal walking control include playback of recorded joint motion and the derivation of dynamic equations to map desired forces at the body to the required torques at the joints. Both methods require a significant amount of up-front knowledge about the structure and characteristics of the robot. This thesis presents an alternative method of control that removes the interdependence of the joint torques and simplifies the mathematics considerably. The simplification allows a programmer to create and tune a bipedal walk controller without requiring a complete model of the dynamics. The controller is implemented in a graphical programming language similar to fuzzy logic and neural networks, in which the algorithm is contained in the structure of the nodes rather than in the weights of the connections. The language and its development environment are specifically designed to assist the programmer to create and debug the algorithm in a live environment.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2002

Author dc:creator

• Wessler, Michael Alan, 1970-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Gill Pratt.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/29228

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/29228