An approach to environment modelling for biped walking robots

In this work, a novel environment representation method which facilitates path planning for biped walking robots is presented. The robot´s environment is represented by a 2D map consisting of free regions, obstacle regions and feasible paths over the obstacle regions. In the free regions, standard path planning methods can be applied to plan paths around large obstacles. These paths are combined with paths over obstacle regions which include stepping over small obstacles as well as changing the walking level. Search for feasible paths rests upon the approximation of the robot by a set of hulls whose shapes allow efficient checking of the path feasibility. By considering only a restricted set of paths over obstacles, some generality is traded against better time performance.