Improvement of humanoid walking control by compensating actuator elasticity

Abstract

The actuators in humanoid robots inevitably have compliance in their joint mechanisms. The joint elasticity often negatively affects static and dynamic performance of the robot. In the specific case of humanoid walking, the elasticity in the actuators can create problems not only on the performance but also on the stability, which is most critical for walking. In this paper, the joint deformation is modeled and its compensation method is proposed to improve walking control performance and stability. The proposed algorithm is implemented on our humanoid robot and its performance is demonstrated by improved stability of walking.