Optimal Motion Generation of the Bipedal Under-Actuated Planar Robot for Stair Climbing

TL;DR

This paper presents an optimization-based method for generating dynamically feasible stair-climbing paths for under-actuated bipedal robots without ankle actuators, enabling effective navigation of stairs.

Contribution

It introduces a novel gradient-based optimization approach for path generation that accounts for zero and non-zero dynamics, ensuring dynamic feasibility for stair climbing.

Findings

The method successfully generates feasible stair-climbing paths.

It can be applied to both ascending and descending stairs.

The approach is computationally efficient.

Abstract

The importance of humanoid robots in today's world is undeniable, one of the most important features of humanoid robots is the ability to maneuver in environments such as stairs that other robots can not easily cross. A suitable algorithm to generate the path for the bipedal robot to climb is very important. In this paper, an optimization-based method to generate an optimal stairway for under-actuated bipedal robots without an ankle actuator is presented. The generated paths are based on zero and non-zero dynamics of the problem, and according to the satisfaction of the zero dynamics constraint in the problem, tracking the path is possible, in other words, the problem can be dynamically feasible. The optimization method used in the problem is a gradient-based method that has a suitable number of function evaluations for computational processing. This method can also be utilized to go down the stairs.