Host: Japan Society for Fuzzy Theory and Intelligent Informatics (SOFT)
In recent years, animal-assisted therapy (AAT), which makes use of the healing effects of animals has attracted attention. However, it is difficult to employ AAT in such facilities because of the risks of the spread of infection from animals to patients and the necessity of proper animal training. Thus, robot-assisted therapy (RAT), in which robots resembling animals are used instead of real animals, is important for patient safety. In RAT, it is important that the robot imitates the motions of a living animal, especially essential motions, such as walking, running, and so on. This paper presents a method for the generation of animal gait in quadrupedal robots. In this study, we employed AIBO as an experimental quadrupedal robot and generated the gait of the robot on the basis of an animal's gait. We generated the quadrupedal gait of AIBO using both the optimum orbit of the mono-leg and an animal's gait, classified as the gait of a walking dog based on zoology. Furthermore, minor deviation of parameters for each joint using chaotic time series analysis was corrected to realize the stable gait on the ground.
