The active sliding synthetic wheel biped is an underactuated, planar, biped robot capable of sliding while walking. This biped is a modification of the previously developed Michigan State University (MSU) synthetic wheel biped (SWB). To create the sliding-while-walking motion, a hybrid controller was created that consisted of a continuous controller over the course of the step and a discrete controller at the end of the step. Partial feedback linearization was used to control the biped's motion to a specified gait during the step. By discretely adjusting gait parameters at the end of each step through chaos control, the biped's motion was stabilized over multiple steps. Numerical simulations were used to determine the configurations in which the biped would step and to validate the hybrid control method. New hardware in the form of belted feet and an electronic controller were added to the previous MSU SWB to account for the increased complexity of sliding while walking. To implement the controller on the physical system, the control method was modified from the theoretical design to account for physical realities. Once altered, the biped successfully walked for multiple steps in experiments by using the hybrid control method.
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