Dynamics Simulation and Controller Interfacing for Legged Robots

Abstract

Dynamics simulation can play a critical role in the engineering of robotic control code, and there exist a variety of strategies both for building physical models and for interacting with these models. This paper presents an approach to dynamics simulation and controller interfacing for legged robots, and contrasts it to existing approaches. We describe dynamics algorithms and contact-resolution strategies for multibody articulated mobile robots based on the decoupled tree-structure approach, and present a novel scripting language that provides a unified framework for control-code interfacing, userinterface design, and data analysis. Special emphasis is placed on facilitating the rapid integration of control algorithms written in a standard object-oriented language (C++), the production of modular, distributed, reusable controllers, and the use of parameterized signal-transmission properties such as delay, sampling rate, and noise.