Title: Legged vehicle control and vibration reduction

Authors: Riadh Zaier; Jamil Abdo

Addresses: Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, College of Engineering, Sultan Qaboos University, P.O. Box 36, Al Khod, 123, Oman. ' Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, College of Engineering, Sultan Qaboos University, P.O. Box 36, Al Khod, 123, Oman

Abstract: This paper presents a design method of controller reducing the vibration of the upper body of a legged vehicle during locomotion. To design locomotion pattern generator, instead of using non-linear dynamics models and solving complex equations, the control strategy is simply based on the use of piecewise linear oscillators and a few parameters that can be easily obtained and tuned. In this research framework, we present tuning algorithms of both the rolling profile and the feedback controllers gains such that the mechanical vibration in the legged vehicle during locomotion is attenuated. As a result, stable and smooth locomotion is obtained. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated by experimental results.

Keywords: legged vehicles; vibration reduction; rhythmic motions; motion pattern generation; vehicle vibration; vehicle control; controller design; tuning algorithms; rolling profile; feedback control.

DOI: 10.1504/IJVNV.2012.046175

International Journal of Vehicle Noise and Vibration, 2012 Vol.8 No.1, pp.74 - 94

Published online: 29 Aug 2014 *

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