Adaptive bipedal walking through sensory-motor coordination yielded from soft deformable feet

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate an adaptive bipedal walking control that exploits sensory information stemming from “soft deformable” feet. To this end, we developed a bipedal robot with soft deformable feet and proposed an unconventional CPG (central pattern generator)-based control that exploits the local force feedback generated from such deformation. Through experiments with the constructed robot, we have found that the robot exhibits a remarkably adaptive walking ability in response to a change in walking velocity and external perturbations. These results support the conclusion that the “deformation” of a robot's body plays a pivotal role in the emergence of “sensory-motor coordination”, which is the key for generating adaptive locomotion in a robotic system.