Experimental Study on Modifiable Walking Pattern Generation for Handling Infeasible Navigational Commands

Abstract

To accommodate various navigational commands, a humanoid should be able to change its walking motion in real time. Using the modifiable walking pattern generation (MWPG) algorithm, a humanoid can handle dynamic walking commands by changing its walking period, step length, and direction independently. If the humanoid is given a command to perform an infeasible movement, the algorithm substitutes the infeasible command with a feasible one using binary search. The feasible navigational command is subsequently translated into the desired center-of-mass (CM) state. Every sample time CM reference is generated using a zero-moment-point (ZMP) variation scheme. Based on this algorithm, various complex walking patterns can be generated, including backward and sideways walking, without detailed consideration of the feasibility of the navigational commands. In a previous study, the effectiveness of the MWPG algorithm was verified by dynamic simulation. This paper presents experimental results obtained using the small-sized humanoid robot platform DARwIn-OP.