Control of Hybrid Locomotion with Impacts

This project will study the management of energy, momentum, and uncertainty for uncertain hybrid mechanical control systems with impacts (or "robot"). While the classical goal of robot motion control is to control the state of the robot with zero uncertainty, the proposed work deals explicitly with the fact that this goal is idealized for all robots and formally impossible for many due to their underactuation. The methodology applies to a broad class of Lagrangian control systems with impacts (e.g., bipeds, hoppers, part manipulators, etc.). Our primary applications are control of dynamic locomotion, based on hardware currently being developed in our lab. The scientific significance of the proposed work is to establish principles of belief filtering, belief controllability, motion planning, and feedback control for hybrid mechanical systems with impacts. These lie at the foundation of principled design and control of extreme locomotion in a variety of environments, as embodied in the examples of limbed robots capable of parkour-style dynamic locomotion in complex environments.