Committee: 

Dr. Verriest, Advisor     

Dr. Vela, Chair

Dr. Zhao

Abstract:

The objective of this research is to investigate new methods for achieving graceful transitions between periodic motions of nonlinear and hybrid systems. The preliminary work presented first focuses on lower order simple nonlinear and hybrid systems like a vertical hopper on granular media, and an inverted spherical pendulum on a cart. Subsequently, we move to higher order, fully actuated bipedal robots. The results presented here are based on a unified Gluskabi Raccordation framework. It is expected that this research should improve our understanding of how animals loco-mote and also provide a framework to generate efficient, safe and elegant motions on high dimensional nonlinear systems such as humanoid bipedal robots.