Humanoid push recovery control in case of multiple non-coplanar contacts

Abstract

This paper presents a method for humanoid push recovery in the general context of multiple non-coplanar contacts. The method consists of a controller that minimizes the kinetic energy of a perturbed whole body humanoid system, while controlling the support change to achieve the stabilization (or push recovery) of the system. The controller uses a simple model based approach to determine the necessity of support change and in this case to approximate a new contact position that allows to stabilize the system. The controller is tested on a simulated humanoid robot and it succeeds in stabilizing the robot in coplanar and non-coplanar environments.