Heel and toe lifting walk controller for resource constrained humanoid robots
Common design principles for low cost humanoid robots include a low center of mass height and a large support area for increased static stability. However, such principles limit the bipedal mobility of the robot due to the kinematic constraints involved. In this paper, we present an efficient locomotion controller that utilizes automatically calculated heel and toe lift motions to overcome the kinematic constraints. This helps with uneven terrain traversal by providing additional support, and also enables a dynamic heel-strike toe-off gait with a large stride length. We demonstrate the controller in physically realistic simulations, and on the THOR-RD full-sized humanoid robot and DARwIn-OP miniature humanoid robot.