Brachiation on a ladder with irregular intervals

Abstract

We have previously developed a brachiation controller that allows a 2-d.o.f. robot to swing from handhold to handhold on a horizontal ladder with evenly space rungs as well as swing up from a suspended posture using a 'target dynamics' controller. In this paper, we extend this class of algorithms to handle the much more natural problem of locomotion over irregularly spaced handholds. Numerical simulations and laboratory experiments illustrate the effectiveness of this generalization.