Balance control of humanoid robots in response to disturbances in the frontal plane

The balance controller plays a central role within the overall control architecture of a humanoid robot. Similar to balance control in humans, the control objectives of the balance controller can be conditionally divided into two large groups [1] balance control during proactive (preplanned) activities; [2]balance control for reactive motion patterns, in response to unexpected disturbances from the environment. We focus in this paper on the second type of balance control objective and more specifically, on the case when the human/robot is subjected to various types of disturbances within the frontal plane, while standing upright.