Real-time Optimal Landing Control of the MIT Mini Cheetah

TL;DR

This paper introduces a real-time, optimal landing controller for quadrupedal robots that adaptively determines contact and force profiles, enabling safe recovery from high falls and various orientations without pre-defined contact schedules.

Contribution

It presents a novel, contact-schedule-free landing controller capable of real-time optimization for quadrupedal robots, improving recovery from diverse fall scenarios.

Findings

Successfully recovered from 8 m drops in simulation.

Achieved safe landings from 2 m drops on hardware.

Handled various orientations and velocities during recovery.

Abstract

Quadrupedal landing is a complex process involving large impacts, elaborate contact transitions, and is a crucial recovery behavior observed in many biological animals. This work presents a real-time, optimal landing controller that is free of pre-specified contact schedules. The controller determines optimal touchdown postures and reaction force profiles and is able to recover from a variety of falling configurations. The quadrupedal platform used, the MIT Mini Cheetah, recovered safely from drops of up to 8 m in simulation, as well as from a range of orientations and planar velocities. The controller is also tested on hardware, successfully recovering from drops of up to 2 m.