Adaptive Control of Inertially Actuated Bouncing Robot

This paper presents a vertically jumping robot based on the inertial actuation concept. Recent research studies in our System Laboratory proved that a wide range of inertially actuated locomotion systems can be generated. This can be achieved by using a family tree approach, starting from a very simple system and progressively evolving it to more complex ones. We discovered that inertial actuation was an efficient method to regulate the motion of these robots. The hopper is the most basic member of this tree and efficient control of its motion using inertial actuation is essential to the design of every element in the family. In this work, we introduce an inertially actuated mass-spring system in the vertical plane. The mathematical model is developed and equations of motion for different modes were derived. Then, the nonlinear accessibility is analyzed. Subsequently, an adaptive control scheme was developed in order to generate periodic inertial actuation. We showed that this actuation drives the system toward a stable periodic orbit. Finally, an experimental prototype was built to verify the practical utility of the presented theoretical methods and concepts.