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

Abstract

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.