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.