Agile Actions with a Centaur-Type Humanoid: A Decoupled Approach

TL;DR

This paper introduces a decoupled control architecture for a centaur-type humanoid robot that enables agile motions by combining offline optimal control of the lower body with online upper-body control, validated through simulations and experiments.

Contribution

It proposes a novel decoupled control approach specifically designed for complex centaur-type humanoids to achieve agile actions efficiently.

Findings

Decoupled control improves computational efficiency.

Three stabilizing strategies are compared in simulation.

Experimental validation confirms effectiveness on real robot.

Abstract

The kinematic features of a centaur-type humanoid platform, combined with a powerful actuation, enable the experimentation of a variety of agile and dynamic motions. However, the higher number of degrees-of-freedom and the increased weight of the system, compared to the bipedal and quadrupedal counterparts, pose significant research challenges in terms of computational load and real implementation. To this end, this work presents a control architecture to perform agile actions, conceived for torque-controlled platforms, which decouples for computational purposes offline optimal control planning of lower-body primitives, based on a template kinematic model, and online control of the upper-body motion to maintain balance. Three stabilizing strategies are presented, whose performance is compared in two types of simulated jumps, while experimental validation is performed on a half-squat jump using the CENTAURO robot.