For legged robots (quadrupeds, bipeds, hexapods), moving from A to B isn't just about wheels turning; it's about Gait Control. A gait is a rhythmic pattern of lifting and placing feet to generate propulsion while maintaining balance.
Before the rise of Deep Reinforcement Learning, practically all legged locomotion was "Heuristical" or "Model-Based." This means we explicitly programmed the rules of walking.
The State Machine Approach
Heuristical gaits are often implemented as Finite State Machines (FSM) for each leg.
- Stance Phase: The foot is on the ground, supporting weight and pushing backward.
- Swing Phase: The foot lifts off, moves forward through the air, and prepares to land.
A central controller (the "CPG" or Central Pattern Generator) coordinates the phase of each leg. For example, a Trot gait pairs diagonal legs together, while a Walk moves them one at a time.
Why use Heuristics?
With the hype around AI-driven walking, why stick to heuristics?
- Predictability: You know exactly how the robot will behave. It won't hallucinate a jump when you asked for a step.
- Debugging: If the robot trips, you can trace exactly which part of the state machine logic failed.
- Compute Efficiency: Heuristical controllers are mathematically simple and run easily on low-power microcontrollers.
Cyberwave's Role: The Behavior Composer
Writing a robust gait controller from scratch is difficult. Cyberwave provides a Behavior Composer that allows you to template these locomotion skills.
- Parameterization: Instead of hard-coding step height or frequency, you expose them as tunable parameters. You can then adjust the "Step Height" slider in the Cyberwave dashboard in real-time to adapt to rougher terrain.
- Gait Library: Cyberwave allows you to store and version-control different gaits. You might have a "Stealth Mode" gait (slow, quiet) and a "Sprint Mode" gait (fast, high-impact).
- Mission Blending: In a Cyberwave mission, you can sequence these behaviors. "Walk to point A using [Gait: Efficient], then switch to [Gait: High-Stepping] to cross the rubble."
This approach gives you the reliability of classical control with the flexibility of modern software orchestration.