Detecting Changes in Contact Interaction Regime with a Reaction Predictor and a Linear Contact Model

Abstract

This paper is focused on a problem of using reaction predictors in the control pipeline of walking robots. The use of such predictors has been proposed for bipedal robots and the main advantage of this proposal is that it allows to exclude unknown reaction forces from the dynamics equations, and hence from model-based control formulations for those robots. In this paper, an additional benefit of predictor-based control formulation is discussed, namely the possibility of using it to predict changes in the contact interaction scenario, such as slipping or take off from the supporting surface.