An important title in the "Engineering Research Series" Adaptive Neural Control of Walking Robots brings together two important areas of technological development: adaptive neural control and mobile/walking robots. The development and management of locomotory robots has not only produced machines that are useful on uneven ground, for climbing walls, in dangerous or hostile environments, and in remote situations, but has also been responsible for some excellent engineering and technological solutions in the field of responsive or adaptive control.

Adaptive Neural Control of Walking Robots will be of interest to engineers and research establishments working on the practical or industrial application of climbing and walking robots. The book will also interest those concerned with robot control systems, adaptive neural control, and applications of autonomous or programmable machine behaviour in multijointed systems.

COMPLETE CONTENTS:

• Introduction and background
• A generic intelligent control hierarchy
• Insect observations and hexapod design
• Models for co-ordination of walking
• Leg trajectory planning and generation
• Hexapod kinematics and dynamics
• The theory of stable adaptive neural control for open-chain systems
• Stable neural control of systems with constraints
  and closed kinematic chains
• Hexapod experiments
• Summary, conclusions, and outlook