Reactive footstep planning for a planar spring mass hopper

Date
2009-10
Advisor
Instructor
Source Title
IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, IROS 2009
Print ISSN
Electronic ISSN
Publisher
IEEE
Volume
Issue
Pages
160 - 166
Language
English
Type
Conference Paper
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Abstract

The main driving force behind research on legged robots has always been their potential for high performance locomotion on rough terrain and the outdoors. Nevertheless, most existing control algorithms for such robots either make rigid assumptions about their environments (e.g flat ground), or rely on kinematic planning at low speeds. Moreover, the traditional separation of planning from control often has negative impact on the robustness of the system against model uncertainty and environment noise. In this paper, we introduce a new method for dynamic, fully reactive footstep planning for a simplified planar spring-mass hopper, a frequently used model for running behaviors. Our approach is based on a careful characterization of the model dynamics and an associated deadbeat controller, used within a sequential composition framework. This yields a purely reactive controller with a very large, nearly global domain of attraction that requires no explicit replanning during execution. Finally, we use a simplified hopper in simulation to illustrate the performance of the planner under different rough terrain scenarios and show that it is extremely robust to both model uncertainty and measurement noise. © 2009 IEEE.

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Keywords
Control algorithms, Driving forces, Footstep planning, Global domain, Legged robots, Low speed, Measurement Noise, Model dynamics, Model uncertainties, Negative impacts, Re-planning, Rough terrains, Sequential compositions, Spring mass, Algorithms, Controllers, Hoppers, Intelligent robots, Landforms, Planning, Uncertainty analysis, Robot programming
Citation
Published Version (Please cite this version)