Class #12: Humanoid and Legged Robots

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A humanoid robot choosing where to place its feet among obstacles (left). A humanoid robot achieving dynamic balance (second left). A four-limbed robot deciding how to use holds to climb a steep wall (third picture). The lunar vehicle ATHLETE (right).

• Topics
  - Foot placement
  - Static vs. dynamic stability
  - Stability constraint
  - Stance graph
• Required Readings:
• Footstep planning for a humanoid robot:
  J. Kuffner, K. Nishiwaki, S. Kagami, M. Inaba, and H. Inoue. Footstep Planning Among Obstacles for Biped Robots. Proc. IEEE/RSJ Int. Conf. on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2001. [pdf]
• Motion planning for a climbing robot:
  T. Bretl. Motion Planning of Multi-Limbed Robots Subject to Equilibrium Constraints: The Free-Climbing Robot Problem. International Journal of Robotics Research, 25(4):317-342, Apr 2006. [pdf]
• Other Readings:
• Spider robot (planning foot placement):
  - J.D. Boissonnat, O. Devillers, L. Donati. Motion Planning of Legged Robots: The Spider Robot Problem. Int. J. of Computational Geometry and Applications, 5(1-2):3-20, 1995. [pdf]
  - A. Shapiro and E. Rimon. PCG: a foothold selection algorithm for spider robot locomotion in 2D tunnels. IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, Taipei, Taiwan, September 2003. [pdf]
  
  
• Other motion planners for legged robot:
  - C. Elsershaw and M. Yim. Motion Planning of Legged Vehicles in Unstructured Environment. Int. IEEE Conf. on Robotics and Automation, Seoul, Korea, 2002. [pdf]
  - J.J. Kuffner, S. Kagami, K. Nishiwaki, M. Inaba, and H. Inoue. Dynamically stable motion planning for legged robots. Autonomous Robots, 2(1):105-118, January 2002. [pdf]
  
  
  
• Powerpoint slides:

o Introduction

o Paper 1

o Paper 2