Feasibility of humanoid robots stepping over obstacles

It is believed that humanoid robots have better mobility than other mobile robots. However, little work has been reported on this mobility for nontrivial motion such as walking on rough terrains and overcoming obstacles. In this paper, we address the problem of obstacle overcoming by stepping-over, focusing on the feasibility analysis. That is, given an obstacle to overcome, we determine if the robot can step over it. In our analysis, we present a technique of global optimization under constraints to obtain the maximum height or width of an obstacle that the robot can step over while maintains the stability and avoids any collision between the robot legs and the obstacle. This analysis is a basis of motion planning for the robots to step over obstacles. It also provides an approach for evaluating the capability of obstacle overcoming of humanoid robots.