Legged Robots: How to make Robots Walk and Run

Course Overview

Bipedal robot locomotion is a challenging problem. This course will introduce students to the math behind bipedal legged robots. We will cover modeling and dynamics of legged robots, trajectory planning for designing walking and running gaits, and common control strategies to achieve the planned motions. The course will also include applied techniques of programming up a simulator with a dynamical model of a bipedal robot as well as a controller that stabilizes a walking gait. This short course will take students through every step of the process, including:

• Mathematical modeling of walking gaits in planar robots.
• Analysis of periodic orbits representing walking gaits.
• Algorithms for synthesizing feedback controllers for walking.
• Algorithms for optimizing energy-efficient walking gaits.
• Detailed simulation examples.