Control design to achieve dynamic walking on a bipedal robot with compliance

Abstract

We propose a control framework for dynamic bipedal locomotion with compliant joints. A novel 3D dynamic walking is achieved by utilizing natural dynamics of the system. It is done by 1) driving robot joints directly with the posture-based state machine and 2) controlling tendon-driven compliant actuators. To enlarge gait's basin attraction for stable walking, we also adaptively plan step-to-step motion and compensate stance/swing motion. Final joint input is described by a superposition of state machine control torques and compensation torques of balancers. Various walking styles are easily generated by composing straight and turning gait-primitives and such walking is effectively able to adapt on various environments. Our proposed method is applied to a torque controlled robot platform, Roboray. Experimental results show that gaits are able to traverse inclined and rough terrains with bounded variations, and the result gaits are human-like comparing the conventional knee bent walkers.