Rule-based motion coordination for the Adaptive Suspension Vehicle on ternary-type terrain

Alternate Titles

• NPS-CS-91-006.

Description

This study investigates the utility of rule based coordination of motion for ternary-type terrain locomotion by a hexapod walking machine. The ternary-type terrain considered is composed of permitted areas, forbidden areas, and ditch areas. The logic for generating motion coordination is written in Prolog while the simulation of the terrain and of the vehicle kinematics, as well as low-level on-board computer functions, are written in extended Common Lisp and Flavors. It is found that this approach, which utilizes multiple programming paradigms for programming motion coordination logic and simulation objects, results in code that is much easier to understand and modify than previous motion coordination programs written in Pascal. Thus, the code development effort and time are greatly reduced. The authors believe that both the methodology and the motion coordination logic presented in this report possess sufficient merit to justify full-scale physical testing in the Adaptive Suspension Vehicle at the Ohio State University.

Subjects