Whole-Body Balancing Walk Controller for Position Controlled Humanoid Robots

Abstract

Bipedal humanoid robots are intrinsically unstable against unforeseen perturbations. Conventional zero moment point (ZMP)-based locomotion algorithms can reject perturbations by incorporating sensory feedback, but they are less effective than the dynamic full body behaviors humans exhibit when pushed. Recently, a number of biomechanically motivated push recovery behaviors have been proposed that can handle larger perturbations. However, these methods are based upon simplified and transparent dynamics of the robot, which makes it suboptimal to implement on common humanoid robots with local position-based controllers. To address this issue, we propose a hierarchical control architecture. Three low-level push recovery controllers are implemented for position controlled humanoid robots that replicate human recovery behaviors. These low-level controllers are integrated with a ZMP-based walk controller that is capable of generating reactive step motions. The high-level controller constructs empirical decision boundaries to choose the appropriate behavior based upon trajectory information gathered during experimental trials. Our approach is evaluated in physically realistic simulations and on a commercially available small humanoid robot.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Mar 01, 2016
Source ID
10.1142/s0219843616500110

Entities

People

  • Byoung-tak Zhang
  • Daniel D. Lee
  • Dennis Hong
  • Seung-joon Yi

Organizations

  • National Science Foundation
  • Office of Naval Research
  • Seoul National University
  • University of California
  • University of Pennsylvania

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Aviation Safety and Air Traffic Management
  • Neural Network Machine Learning.
  • Team-Based Human-Centered Cognitive Task Decision Making and Information Performance.

Technology Areas

  • AI & ML
  • AI & ML - Autonomous Systems
  • AI & ML - Machine Learning Algorithms
  • Autonomy
  • Autonomy - Autonomous System Control