A Bio-inspired Distributed Hierarchical Control Framework for Walking of a 3-Link Biped Robot

Human walking is one of the most robust and adaptive locomotion mechanisms in nature, involves sophisticated interactions between neural and biomechanical levels. It has been suggested that the coordination of this process is done in a hierarchy of levels. The lower layer contains autonomous interactions between muscles and spinal cord and the higher layer (e.g. the brain cortex) interferes when needed. Inspiringly, in this study, we present a hierarchical control architecture in order to control under-actuated and high degree of freedom systems with limit cycle behavior and it is implemented for the walking control of a 3-link biped robot. In this architecture, the system is controlled by independent control units for each joint at the lower layer. In order to stabilize the system, these units are driven by a sensory feedback from the posture of the robot. A central stabilizing controller at the upper layer arises in case of failing the units to stabilize the system and take the responsibility of training the lower layer controllers. We show that using this architecture, a highly unstable system can be stabilized with identical simple controller units even though they do not have any feedback from all other units and the robot.