Online Control for Biped Robot with Incremental Learning Mechanism

In this paper, we develop a new online walking controller for biped robots, which integrates a neural-network estimator and an incremental learning mechanism to improve the control performance in dynamic environment. With the aid of an iteration algorithm for updating, some newly incoming data can be used straightforwardly to update into the original well-trained model, in order to avoid a time-consuming retraining procedure. On the other hand, how to maintain the zero-moment-point stability and counteract the effect of yaw moment simultaneously is also a key technical problem to be addressed. To this end, an interval type-2 fuzzy weight identifier is newly developed, which assigns weight for each walking sample to deal with the imbalanced distribution problem of training data. The effectiveness of the proposed control scheme has been verified through a full-dynamics simulation and a practical robot experiment.

A modular framework to generate robust biped locomotion: from planning to control

Biped robots are inherently unstable because of their complex kinematics as well as dynamics. Despite many research efforts in developing biped locomotion, the performance of biped locomotion is still far from the expectations. This paper proposes a model-based framework to generate stable biped locomotion. The core of this framework is an abstract dynamics model which is composed of three masses to consider the dynamics of stance leg, torso, and swing leg for minimizing the tracking problems. According to this dynamics model, we propose a modular walking reference trajectories planner which takes into account obstacles to plan all the references. Moreover, this dynamics model is used to formulate the controller as a Model Predictive Control (MPC) scheme which can consider some constraints in the states of the system, inputs, outputs, and also mixed input-output. The performance and the robustness of the proposed framework are validated by performing several numerical simulations using MATLAB. Moreover, the framework is deployed on a simulated torque-controlled humanoid to verify its performance and robustness. The simulation results show that the proposed framework is capable of generating biped locomotion robustly.

Torque Curve Optimization of Ankle Push-Off in Walking Bipedal Robots Using Genetic Algorithm

Ankle push-off occurs when muscle–tendon units about the ankle joint generate a burst of positive power at the end of stance phase in human walking. Ankle push-off mainly contributes to both leg swing and center of mass (CoM) acceleration. Humans use the amount of ankle push-off to induce speed changes. Thus, this study focuses on determining the faster walking speed and the lowest energy efficiency of biped robots by using ankle push-off. The real-time-space trajectory method is used to provide reference positions for the hip and knee joints. The torque curve during ankle push-off, composed of three quintic polynomial curves, is applied to the ankle joint. With the walking distance and the mechanical cost of transport (MCOT) as the optimization goals, the genetic algorithm (GA) is used to obtain the optimal torque curve during ankle push-off. The results show that the biped robot achieved a maximum speed of 1.3 m/s, and the ankle push-off occurs at 41.27−48.34% of the gait cycle. The MCOT of the bipedal robot corresponding to the high economy gait is 0.70, and the walking speed is 0.54 m/s. This study may further prompt the design of the ankle joint and identify the important implications of ankle push-off for biped robots.