Rhythmic robot arm control using oscillators

Abstract

This paper presents an approach to robot arm control based on exploiting the dynamical properties of a simple oscillator circuit coupled to the joints of an arm. Using the same architecture, a wide variety of tasks can be achieved without any explicit modeling of the arm or its environment. The inherent properties of the oscillators give robustness to perturbations and changes in frequency. The approach is implemented on two compliant arms, and is demonstrated to swing pendulums at their natural frequencies, turn cranks and manipulate 'Slinky' toys.