Cerebellar Control of Robot Arms

Abstract

Decades of research into the structure and function of the cerebellum have led to a clear understanding of many of its cells, as well as how learning takes place. Furthermore, there are many theories on what signals the cerebellum operates on, and how it works in concert with other parts of the nervous system. Nevertheless, the application of computational cerebellar models to the control of robot dynamics remains in its infant state. To date, a few applications have been realized, but limited to the control of traditional robot structures which, strictly speaking, do not require adaptive control for the tasks that are performed since their dynamic structures are relatively simple. The currently emerging family of light-weight robots (Hirzinger, G. (1996) In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Advanced Robotics, Intelligent Automation, and Active Systems, Vienna, Austria) poses a new challenge to robot control: owing to their complex dynamics, traditional methods, depending on a full analysis of the dynamics of the system, are no longer applicable since the joints influence each other's dynamics during movement. Can artificial cerebellar models compete here? In this paper, we present a succinct introduction of the cerebellum, and discuss where it could be applied to tackle problems in robotics. Without conclusively answering the above question, an overview of several applications of cerebellar models to robot control is given.