Real-time humanoid motion generation through ZMP manipulation based on inverted pendulum control

A humanoid robot is expected to be a rational form of machine to act in the real human environment and support people through interaction with them. Current humanoid robots, however, lack in adaptability, agility, or high-mobility enough to meet the expectations. In order to enhance high-mobility, the humanoid motion should be generated in real-time in accordance with the dynamics, which commonly requires a large amount of computation and has not been implemented so far. We have developed a real-time motion generation method that controls the center of gravity (COG) by indirect manipulation of the zero moment point (ZMP). The real-time response of the method provides humanoid robots with high-mobility. In the paper, the algorithm is presented. It consists of four parts, namely, the referential ZMP planning, the ZMP manipulation, the COG velocity decomposition to joint angles, and local control of joint angles. An advantage of the algorithm lies in its applicability to humanoids with a lot of degrees of freedom. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by computer simulations.