Bio-inspired locomotion control with coordination between neural oscillators

Abstract

Central Pattern Generator (CPG) is used in bipedal locomotion control to provide the basic rhythm signal for actuators. Generally, the CPG is composed of many neural oscillators coupled together. In this paper, the coordination between neural oscillators in CPG is studied to achieve robust rhythm motions. By using the entrainment property of the neural oscillator, we develop a method which uses the difference between oscillator's output and desired output to adjust the inner states of neural oscillators. In the simulation, a CPG structure with coordination between neural oscillators is used to control a 2D bipedal robot. The robot can walk continuously when several external forces are applied on the robot during walking. The method is also implemented on our humanoid robot NUSBIP-III ASLAN for the test of walking forward. With the coordination between neural oscillators, the CPG generated rhythmic and robust control signals which enable the robot to walk forward stably. © 2009 World Scientific Publishing Company.