Simple models of legged locomotion based on compliant limb behavior = Grundmodelle pedaler Lokomotion basierend auf nachgiebigem Beinverhalten

In der vorliegenden Dissertation werden einfache Modelle zur Beinlokomotion unter der gemeinsamen Hypothese entwickelt, dass die beiden grundlegenden und als verschieden angesehenen Gangarten Gehen und Rennen auf ein allgemeines Konzept zurückgeführt werden können, welches in den Standphasen allein auf nachgiebigem Beinverhalten beruht. Hierbei wird auf der Ebene der mechanischen Beschreibung der Gangarten nachgiebiges Beinverhalten mittels des vom Rennen bekannten Masse-Feder-Modells abstrahiert. Zunächst wird eine vergleichsweise einfache, analytische Näherungslösung desselben identifiziert; in einem weiteren Schritt wird die charakteristische Geschwindigkeit des Gangartwechsels aus federartigem Beinverhalten erklärt; und schließlich wird ein zweibeiniges Masse-Feder-Modell für Gehen vorgeschlagen, welches die beobachteten Bodenreaktionskräfte dieser Gangart beschreibt. Auf der Ebene der neuromechanischen Beschreibung wird aufgezeigt, wie das mit einer mechanischen Feder abstrahierte Beinverhalten durch eine positive Rückkopplung der Muskelkraft dezentral und autonom innerhalb des Muskelskelettapparats erzeugt werden kann. Schließlich werden die Einzelergebnisse der Arbeit zusammengefasst, wobei die beiden fundamentalen Gangarten Gehen und Rennen innerhalb des zweibeinigen Masse-Feder-Modells vereinigt werden und die Bedeutung dieses, auf nachgiebigem Beinverhalten beruhenden Zusammenschlusses sowohl für die biomechanische und motorische Grundlagenforschung als auch für Anwendungen in der Robotik, Rehabilitation und Prothetik erörtert wird

Climbing and Walking Robots

Nowadays robotics is one of the most dynamic fields of scientific researches. The shift of robotics researches from manufacturing to services applications is clear. During the last decades interest in studying climbing and walking robots has been increased. This increasing interest has been in many areas that most important ones of them are: mechanics, electronics, medical engineering, cybernetics, controls, and computers. Today’s climbing and walking robots are a combination of manipulative, perceptive, communicative, and cognitive abilities and they are capable of performing many tasks in industrial and non- industrial environments. Surveillance, planetary exploration, emergence rescue operations, reconnaissance, petrochemical applications, construction, entertainment, personal services, intervention in severe environments, transportation, medical and etc are some applications from a very diverse application fields of climbing and walking robots. By great progress in this area of robotics it is anticipated that next generation climbing and walking robots will enhance lives and will change the way the human works, thinks and makes decisions. This book presents the state of the art achievments, recent developments, applications and future challenges of climbing and walking robots. These are presented in 24 chapters by authors throughtot the world The book serves as a reference especially for the researchers who are interested in mobile robots. It also is useful for industrial engineers and graduate students in advanced study

Humanoid Robots

For many years, the human being has been trying, in all ways, to recreate the complex mechanisms that form the human body. Such task is extremely complicated and the results are not totally satisfactory. However, with increasing technological advances based on theoretical and experimental researches, man gets, in a way, to copy or to imitate some systems of the human body. These researches not only intended to create humanoid robots, great part of them constituting autonomous systems, but also, in some way, to offer a higher knowledge of the systems that form the human body, objectifying possible applications in the technology of rehabilitation of human beings, gathering in a whole studies related not only to Robotics, but also to Biomechanics, Biomimmetics, Cybernetics, among other areas. This book presents a series of researches inspired by this ideal, carried through by various researchers worldwide, looking for to analyze and to discuss diverse subjects related to humanoid robots. The presented contributions explore aspects about robotic hands, learning, language, vision and locomotion

Adaptive motion synthesis and motor invariant theory.

Generating natural-looking motion for virtual characters is a challenging research topic. It becomes even harder when adapting synthesized motion to interact with the environment. Current methods are tedious to use, computationally expensive and fail to capture natural looking features. These difficulties seem to suggest that artificial control techniques are inferior to their natural counterparts. Recent advances in biology research point to a new motor control principle: utilizing the natural dynamics. The interaction of body and environment forms some patterns, which work as primary elements for the motion repertoire: Motion Primitives. These elements serve as templates, tweaked by the neural system to satisfy environmental constraints or motion purposes. Complex motions are synthesized by connecting motion primitives together, just like connecting alphabets to form sentences. Based on such ideas, this thesis proposes a new dynamic motion synthesis method. A key contribution is the insight into dynamic reason behind motion primitives: template motions are stable and energy efficient. When synthesizing motions from templates, valuable properties like stability and efficiency should be perfectly preserved. The mathematical formalization of this idea is the Motor Invariant Theory and the preserved properties are motor invariant In the process of conceptualization, newmathematical tools are introduced to the research topic. The Invariant Theory, especially mathematical concepts of equivalence and symmetry, plays a crucial role. Motion adaptation is mathematically modelled as topological conjugacy: a transformation which maintains the topology and results in an analogous system. The Neural Oscillator and Symmetry Preserving Transformations are proposed for their computational efficiency. Even without reference motion data, this approach produces natural looking motion in real-time. Also the new motor invariant theory might shed light on the long time perception problem in biological research

Legged Robots

International audienc