Kemalettin Erbatur

About

Kemalettin Erbatur is a prominent robotics and control systems researcher whose work spans two defining areas: biped and humanoid robot locomotion, and intelligent sliding-mode control. He is perhaps best known for his pioneering contributions to walking reference trajectory generation, particularly his development of natural Zero Moment Point (ZMP) trajectories for biped robots — a framework that has become foundational in humanoid locomotion research, earning his 2008 paper nearly 200 citations. His early 2003 work on ZMP measurement for biped walking robots (128 citations) further established him as a key figure in quantifying and understanding balance dynamics in legged systems. Erbatur also made significant contributions to robust control theory, proposing adaptive fuzzy systems to elegantly solve the chattering problem inherent in sliding-mode controllers — work that attracted substantial attention across the robotics community. A landmark achievement in his career is the SURALP humanoid robot, a 29-degree-of-freedom full-body platform developed at Sabanci University, Turkey, which served as a testbed for his locomotion algorithms. His more recent research extended ZMP-based methods to quadruped robots and advanced state estimation for walking bipeds, reflecting a sustained, evolving research vision with lasting influence on legged robotics worldwide.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   Natural ZMP Trajectories for Biped Robot Reference Generation

   195 citations · 2008
2. 2
   A study on the zero moment point measurement for biped walking robots

   128 citations · 2003
3. 3
   Fuzzy adaptive sliding mode control of a direct drive robot

   52 citations · 1996
4. 4
   Use of adaptive fuzzy systems in parameter tuning of sliding-mode controllers

   43 citations · 2001
5. 5
   Humanoid Walking Robot Control with Natural ZMP References

   35 citations · 2006
6. 6
   Chattering elimination via fuzzy boundary layer tuning

   23 citations · 2003
7. 7
   SURALP: A new full-body humanoid robot platform

   22 citations · 2009
8. 8
   Biped robot reference generation with natural ZMP trajectories

   22 citations · 2006
9. 9
   Center of mass states and disturbance estimation for a walking biped

   20 citations · 2013
10. 10
    Zero Moment Point based pace reference generation for quadruped robots via preview control

    20 citations · 2012

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links