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Architecture of Computing Systems (Lecture Notes in Computer ...

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Firefly Flash<strong>in</strong>g Synchronization as Inspiration for Self-synchronization 65<br />

signals to an OCU which monitors the ‘health’ status <strong>of</strong> the leg. The BCU related to<br />

leg gait generation sends synchronization signals to other BCUs <strong>of</strong> other neighbour<strong>in</strong>g<br />

legs. This is represented <strong>in</strong> Fig. 4. The self-synchronization achieved by this is expla<strong>in</strong>ed<br />

<strong>in</strong> the next section.<br />

Therefore, besides the possibility for gait pattern generation <strong>in</strong> an emergent way<br />

[33], also the synchronization <strong>of</strong> walk<strong>in</strong>g gait patterns is achieved <strong>in</strong> a decentralized<br />

and self-organiz<strong>in</strong>g way. Such a decentralized leg control architecture is very important<br />

for develop<strong>in</strong>g fault-tolerant robotic systems.<br />

Fig. 4. Decentralized robot leg control architecture for gait pattern self-synchronization<br />

4 Walk<strong>in</strong>g Robot Gait Pattern Self-synchronization Inspired by<br />

Firefly Flash<strong>in</strong>g Synchronization<br />

The idea beh<strong>in</strong>d the synchronization <strong>of</strong> the gait patterns is that sometimes the gait<br />

pattern <strong>of</strong> the robot can change while the robot is walk<strong>in</strong>g. This may happen for example<br />

when the emergent walk<strong>in</strong>g pattern is used for the robot’s walk<strong>in</strong>g and some<br />

situations appear like: the leg is approach<strong>in</strong>g some rock and some sensor (ultrasonic,<br />

<strong>in</strong>frared, etc.) related to the leg’s movement “<strong>in</strong>forms” the leg that it should change<br />

the length <strong>of</strong> its stance/sw<strong>in</strong>g phase <strong>in</strong> order to overcome the obstacle. In that case the<br />

other legs have to synchronize their stance/sw<strong>in</strong>g phase as well. A similar situation<br />

may occur when perhaps the servo related for protraction <strong>of</strong> the leg gets somehow

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