Organic Fault-Tolerant Controller for the Walking Robot OSCAR

Abstract

A robust, fault-tolerant autonomous walking robot OSCAR and its control architecture are presented. Organic Computing methods, self-organization in particular, are used to make the robot tolerant to faults of parts of itself (defective motors e.g.) or unforeseen situations it might be faced within an unstructured environment. Inspired by nature, our robot generates its gaits autonomously. In case of an injury or even the loss of one leg, OSCAR will adapt its gait to only use the remaining legs and walk ahead in a self-organizing way. We describe modifications we applied to a second prototype that allows that robot to optimize its gaits further to be able to walk also in difficult terrain.