Development of Control for a Serpentine Robot

This paper describes the development and testing of control of the OmniTread OT-4 robot by the seventh generation (7G) control system. Control of OT-4 was developed in the Yobotics 3D simulator by an iterative process combining genetic algorithm, learning and analytic programming techniques. The control system developed in simulation was tested by controlling the real OT-4 robot in the laboratory. The performance of the real OT-4 robot under 7G control on stairs, parallel bars, a slalom course, and stairs with obstacles corresponded well to the simulated performance on which development of the control system was based.