ABSTRACT
Insect neurobiologists discovered another way limbs are controlled during locomotion; here, feedback from the environment plays a fundamental role in onsetting and finely controlling locomotion. A purely decentralised locomotion control can efficiently cope with this phenomenon as well. This chapter deals with locomotion control of a quadruped robot prototype. Bio-inspired locomotion is characterised by the successive migration of each leg between different phases. The emergence of phase control of the limb oscillation uniquely on the basis of local sensory feedback from the neighbouring legs. In their approach to locomotion control, they disjointed the part devoted to the phase generation to that devoted to the leg actuation control. Adaptive unprogrammed locomotion patterns were found; vestibular feedback is, however, high-level information which hides local feedback sensed by the legs. A suitable compromise between centralised and decentralised approaches to adaptive locomotion could be the right solution.
