Simultaneous Ground Reaction Force and State Estimation via Constrained Moving Horizon Estimation

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel constrained Moving Horizon Estimation framework for legged robots that simultaneously estimates ground reaction forces and states, effectively handling sensor noise and dynamic coupling for improved locomotion control.

Contribution

It presents a decentralized MHE approach that fuses multiple sensor data and contact constraints, providing accurate force and state estimates at high frequency.

Findings

Accurate GRF and state estimation on various robots.

Operates at 200Hz with a 0.04s window.

Effective handling of sensor noise and dynamic coupling.

Abstract

Accurate ground reaction force (GRF) estimation can significantly improve the adaptability of legged robots in various real-world applications. For instance, with estimated GRF and contact kinematics, the locomotion control and planning assist the robot in overcoming uncertain terrains. The canonical momentum-based methods, formulated as nonlinear observers, do not fully address the noisy measurements and the dependence between floating-base states and the generalized momentum dynamics. In this paper, we present a simultaneous ground reaction force and state estimation framework for legged robots, which systematically addresses the sensor noise and the coupling between states and dynamics. With the floating base orientation estimated separately, a decentralized Moving Horizon Estimation (MHE) method is implemented to fuse the robot dynamics, proprioceptive sensors, exteroceptive sensors, and deterministic contact complementarity constraints in a convex windowed optimization. The proposed method is shown to be capable of providing accurate GRF and state estimation on several legged robots, including the custom-designed humanoid robot Bucky, the open-source educational planar bipedal robot STRIDE, and the quadrupedal robot Unitree Go1, with a frequency of 200Hz and a past time window of 0.04s.