Development of quadruped robot system mounting integrated circuits of pulse-type hardware neuron models for gait generation

The authors have been studying robots equipped with pulse-type hardware neuron models (P-HNMs) that mimic biological neurons. In a previous study, we developed a quadruped robot system mounting P-HNMs. The authors confirmed the generation of animal-like gait that transitions gait in response to the speed of movement. However, significant circuit variations occurred between the circuit boards of the P-HNMs because the discrete elements had been soldered to the circuit board by hand. Therefore, the circuit characteristics have to adjust using variable resistance for each experiment. In this paper, the authors developed an integrated circuit of P-HNMs to reduce the circuit variation. Also, we mounted the integrated circuits of P-HNMs on a quadruped robot system. As a result, we confirmed that an integrated circuit of P-HNMs does not require any adjustments to actuate the robot system. Also, the author established that the proposed quadruped robot system generates a gait like the “Walk” and the “Trot” of quadruped animals through the walking experiments. The generated gaits are three to seven times longer than the previous robot system.