Title: Biologically-inspired postural and reaching control of a multi-segment humanoid robot

Authors: Karim A. Tahboub

Addresses: Automation Laboratory, Institute of Computer Engineering, University of Heidelberg, B6, 26 Rhenania Building, 68131 Mannheim, Germany

Abstract: This article presents a biologically-inspired framework for postural and reaching control of a multi-segment humanoid robot. In addition to the inherent instability of humanoids, multi-segment motion introduces destabilising dynamic coupling effects that requires heterogeneous control in the form of full state feedback. Thus, a robust multi-input-multi-output tracking control architecture with feedback, feedforward, and integral control parts is implemented. This article addresses as well a variety of external disturbances that might act on the humanoid such as supporting surface translational and rotational motion as well as external pull/push forces acting on the body of the humanoid. Two methods are developed to estimate these disturbances for the purpose of compensating them: a vestibular stand-alone Kalman filter and a central extended disturbance observer. Simulation experiments demonstrate good performance for both and highlight the merits of the central extended observer which is based on a full kinematic and kinetic humanoind internal model.

Keywords: humanoid robots; human postural control; reaching control; bio-inspired computation; multi-segment robots; disturbance estimation; disturbance compensation; time delay; feedback control; robot motion; feedforward control; heterogeneous control; tracking control; robot control; Kalman filter; disturbance observer; modelling; simulation; kinematics; kinetics.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBBR.2011.040036

International Journal of Biomechatronics and Biomedical Robotics, 2011 Vol.1 No.3, pp.175 - 190

Published online: 21 Mar 2015 *

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