Compliant motion control for a humanoid robot in contact with the environment and humans

This paper introduces a new method that enables compliant joint control on a traditional joint position controlled system by using Torque to Position Transformer. In this method, torque control is accomplished by converting desired joint torques into instantaneous increments of joint position command. For each joint, the transformer was modeled based on the identification of the individual motor controller. This framework was experimentally implemented on the Honda ASIMO which is controlled by the traditional position controlled system. Decoupled task dynamics by the Operational Space Control was applied to realize compliant posture control and accurate task control. The paper presents the experimental results of the implementation which demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach. This proposed approach provides higher performance in compliant and safe motion which is required for motion in contact with the environment and human.