Estimation of the Center of Mass Using Statically Equivalent Serial Chain Modeling

Abstract

This paper proposes a new technique to estimate the center of mass (CoM) of mechanical systems defined by an articulated set of rigid bodies. This technique is based on the use of the statically equivalent serial chain, a serial chain representation on any multi-link branched chain. Through the use of this model, and without any knowledge of each individual body’s CoM or CoM location, a simple method to estimate the mechanical system’s CoM is developed. This method is validated with the CoM estimation of the Hoap-3 humanoid robot. A sensitivity calculation for estimating the CoM in this way is also presented.