Walking of the iCub humanoid robot in different scenarios: implementation and performance analysis

TL;DR

This paper implements and analyzes walking capabilities of the iCub humanoid robot using software modules based on classic control techniques, assessing its performance across various scenarios.

Contribution

It introduces software modules for walking on iCub and evaluates its capabilities and limitations in different scenarios.

Findings

iCub can perform walking motions with the new hardware

The implemented methods reveal the robot's walking limitations

Performance varies across different walking tasks

Abstract

The humanoid robot iCub is a research platform of the Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), spread among different institutes around the world. In the most recent version of iCub, the robot is equipped with stronger legs and bigger feet, allowing it to perform balancing and walking motions that were not possible with the first generations. Despite the new legs hardware, walking has been rarely performed on the iCub robot. In this work the objective is to implement walking motions on the robot, from which we want to analyze its walking capabilities. We developed software modules based on extensions of classic techniques such as the ZMP based pattern generator and position control to identify which are the characteristics as well as limitations of the robot against different walking tasks in order to give the users a reference of the performance of the robot. Most of the experiments have been performed with HeiCub, a reduced version of iCub without arms and head.