DRC-hubo walking on rough terrains

Abstract

Up to now humanoid robots have been designed primarily for walking on flat surfaces. In the future, humanoid robots are required to replace human beings to operate in natural or damaged man-engineered environments. In the 2013 DARPA Robotics Challenge, the robots are required to walk through several type of rough terrains. In this scenario, the robot will be challenged to keep balance and fulfill the tasks while walking. We have developed several balance gaits and associated controllers. The latter collaborate with a computer vision system to enable our humanoid robot DRC-Hubo to walk over rough terrains. Both theoretical and experimental results are presented to verify the approach.