Proposing a novel one-legged robot: control via Poincare map

Abstract

Two contributions of the paper are that: (1) a novel manner of one-legged locomotion, ballistic flipping, is proposed; (2) by using the method of a Poincare map, the fixed points corresponding to unstable cyclic flipping gait are found in simulation, then a strategy based on a neural network is presented to stabilize the fixed point. This robot needs no active control during its flight phases. Compared with other one-legged robots that had to regulate their attitudes while in flight, this robot may be energetically economical.