Experimental verification of hysteresis in gait transition of a quadruped robot driven by nonlinear oscillators with phase resetting

In this paper, we investigated the locomotion of a quadruped robot, whose legs are controlled by an oscillator network system. In our previous work, simulation studies revealed that a quadruped robot produces walk and trot patterns through dynamic interactions among the robot´s mechanical system, the oscillator network system, and the environment. These studies also showed that a walk-trot transition is induced by changing the walking speed. In addition, the gait-pattern transition exhibited a hysteresis similar to that observed in the locomotion of humans and animals. The aim of the present study is to verify such dynamic characteristics in the gait generation of quadrupedal locomotion in the real world by developing and evaluating a quadruped robot.