Landing Control for Biped Robot with Spring Embedded Feet and Walking Experiment on Unknown and Uneven Terrain

Abstract

This paper deals with landing control to achieve stable biped walking on unknown and uneven terrain, and presents a walking control method that consists of a walking motion generator and landing controller. It is important to suppress an impact force and to place a foot on the actual ground for landing on such terrain. Because the conventional foot generally has a rigid body, it is difficult to suppress the impulsive reaction force. To achieve the above two objectives simultaneously, a landing controller for adjusting a foot position by feeding back the reaction force has been proposed in our previous study. This controller provides the robust stability of control system with respect to terrain variance and exact positioning of the foot to actual ground without exceeding reaction force. In this study, this controller is applied to a simple biped robot that has spring embedded feet. The effectiveness of the proposed walking control method on unknown and uneven terrain is demonstrated experimentally.