Planning Natural Locomotion for Articulated Soft Quadrupeds
Mathew Jose Pollayil (University of Pisa)
C. Della Santina (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR), TU Delft - Learning & Autonomous Control)
George Mesesan (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR))
Johannes Englsberger (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR))
Daniel Seidel (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR))
Manolo Garabini (University of Pisa)
Christian Ott (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR))
Antonio Bicchi (University of Pisa)
Alin Albu-Schaffer (Technische Universität München, Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR))
More Info
expand_more
Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.
Abstract
Embedding elastic elements into legged robots through mechanical design enables highly efficient oscillating patterns that resemble natural gaits. However, current trajectory planning techniques miss the opportunity of taking advantage of these natural motions. This work proposes a locomotion planning method that aims to unify traditional trajectory generation with modal oscillations. Our method utilizes task-space linearized modes for generating center of mass trajectories on the sagittal plane. We then use nonlinear optimization to find the gait timings that match these trajectories within the Divergent Component of Motion planning framework. This way, we can robustly translate the modes-aware centroidal motions into joint coordinates. We validate our approach with promising results and insights through experiments on a compliant quadrupedal robot.