The ability of legged systems to traverse highly-constrained environments depends by and large on the performance of their motion and balance controllers. This paper presents a controller that excels in a scenario that most state-of-the-art balance controllers have not yet addressed: line walking, or walking on nearly null support regions. Our approach uses a low-dimensional virtual model (2-DoF) to generate balancing actions through a previously derived four-term balance controller and transforms them to the robot through a derived kinematic mapping. The capabilities of this controller are tested in simulation, where we show the 90kg quadruped robot HyQ crossing a bridge of only 6 cm width (compared to its 4 cm diameter foot sphere), by balancing on two feet at any time while moving along a line. Additional simulations are carried to test the performance of the controller and the effect of external disturbances. The same controller is then used on the real robot to present for the first time a legged robot balancing on a contact line of nearly null support area.
翻译:梯子系统绕过高度受限制环境的能力很大程度上取决于其运动和平衡控制器的性能。 本文展示了一位在大多数最先进的平衡控制器尚未处理的情景中最优秀的控制器: 线条行走, 或者在几乎完全无支持的区域行走。 我们的方法使用一个低维虚拟模型 (2- DoF) 来通过一个以前衍生的四期平衡控制器产生平衡动作, 并通过衍生的动能绘图将其转换为机器人。 该控制器的能力在模拟中测试, 我们通过模拟显示90公斤四重机械人HyQ通过一条只有6厘米宽的桥梁( 而其直径为4厘米, 直径范围为4厘米), 在沿着一条线行走时以两英尺为平衡。 额外的模拟可以测试控制器的性能和外部扰动的效果。 随后, 同一控制器在真正的机器人上首次展示一个腿式机器人, 以平衡几乎完全无支持的连接线上的连接器。