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An originally chaotic system can be controlled into various periodic dynamics. When it is implemented into a legged robot's locomotion control as a central pattern generator (CPG), sophisticated gait patterns arise so that the robot can perform various walking behaviors. However, such a single chaotic CPG controller has difficulties dealing with leg malfunction. Specifically, in the scenarios presented here, its movement permanently deviates from the desired trajectory. To address this problem, we extend the single chaotic CPG to multiple CPGs with learning. The learning mechanism is based on a simulated annealing algorithm. In a normal situation, the CPGs synchronize and their dynamics are identical. With leg malfunction or disability, the CPGs lose synchronization leading to independent dynamics. In this case, the learning mechanism is applied to automatically adjust the remaining legs' oscillation frequencies so that the robot adapts its locomotion to deal with the malfunction. As a consequence, the trajectory produced by the multiple chaotic CPGs resembles the original trajectory far better than the one produced by only a single CPG. The performance of the system is evaluated first in a physical simulation of a quadruped as well as a hexapod robot and finally in a real six-legged walking machine called AMOSII. The experimental results presented here reveal that using multiple CPGs with learning is an effective approach for adaptive locomotion generation where, for instance, different body parts have to perform independent movements for malfunction compensation., Comment: 48 pages, 16 figures, Information Sciences 2014

Predictive Feedback Control is an easy-to-implement method to stabilize unknown unstable periodic orbits in chaotic dynamical systems. Predictive Feedback Control is severely limited because asymptotic convergence speed decreases with stronger instabilities which in turn are typical for larger target periods, rendering it harder to effectively stabilize periodic orbits of large period. Here, we study stalled chaos control, where the application of control is stalled to make use of the chaotic, uncontrolled dynamics, and introduce an adaptation paradigm to overcome this limitation and speed up convergence. This modified control scheme is not only capable of stabilizing more periodic orbits than the original Predictive Feedback Control but also speeds up convergence for typical chaotic maps, as illustrated in both theory and application. The proposed adaptation scheme provides a way to tune parameters online, yielding a broadly applicable, fast chaos control that converges reliably, even for periodic orbits of large period.

Stabilizing unstable periodic orbits in a chaotic invariant set not only reveals information about its structure but also leads to various interesting applications. For the successful application of a chaos control scheme, convergence speed is of crucial importance. Here we present a predictive feedback chaos control method that adapts a control parameter online to yield optimal asymptotic convergence speed. We study the adaptive control map both analytically and numerically and prove that it converges at least linearly to a value determined by the spectral radius of the control map at the periodic orbit to be stabilized. The method is easy to implement algorithmically and may find applications for adaptive online control of biological and engineering systems., Comment: 21 pages, 6 figures