Landing Force Controller for a Humanoid Robot: Time-Domain Passivity Approach

For the purpose of a humanoid robot´s stable walking or running, it is important to absorb landing force or ground reaction force which is generated when the robot´s foot lands on the ground surface. The force can make the robot unstable, and the problem becomes serious if the robot runs. This paper proposes a control system, which can absorb the landing force of a humanoid robot. Time-domain passivity control approach is applied for this purpose. Ground and the robot´s foot are modeled as two one-port network systems, which are connected and exchange energy with each other. The time-domain passivity controller has the landing force as input and controls the foot´s position to reduce the force. The proposed controller can guarantee the stability of the robot system without need of any dynamic model information or control parameters. Using small sized humanoid robot, dynamic walking experiments are performed to verify the proposed scheme, and its efficiency is shown from the comparison with the other scheme.