Stable active running of a planar biped robot using Poincare map control

This work formulates the active limit cycles of bipedal running gaits for a compliant leg structure as the fixed point of an active Poincare map. Two types of proposed controllers stabilize the Poincare map around its active fixed point. The first one is a discrete linear state feedback controller designed with appropriate pole placement. The discrete-time control first uses purely constant torques during stance and flight phase, then discretizes each phase into smaller constant-torque intervals. The other controller is an invariant manifold based chaos controller: a generalized Ott, Grebogi and Yorke controller having a linear form and a nonlinear form. Both controllers can stabilize active running gaits on either even or sloped terrains. The efficiency of these controllers for bipedal running applications are compared and discussed.