Walking control using the SC approach for humanoid robot

Abstract

Conventional humanoid robots cannot achieve human like walking patterns. The reason is that human walking patterns include singularity configurations, i.e. configurations with the extended knees. Such kinematic singularities cause spurious joint motions. In other words, a humanoid robot cannot handle the singularity problem. On the other hand, humans make use of singularity configurations, because at such configurations large forces in certain directions can be generated. Therefore, singularities play an important roll for creating efficient walking patterns. In our previous work, we proposed the singularity consistent (SC) approach that can handle the singularity problem without instabilities. Until now, the approach has been applied to various manipulators. In this paper, we implement the SC approach into a walking pattern generator for a humanoid. Some issues and resolutions addressed. Experimental results show the effectiveness of our approach