Quadratic Programming-Based Posture Manipulation and Thrust-vectoring for Agile Dynamic Walking on Narrow Pathways
🤖 AI Summary
To address insufficient lateral stability of quadrupedal robots during dynamic locomotion on narrow paths, this paper proposes an active balance control method leveraging knee-mounted vectoring thrusters. The approach integrates foot-ground contact forces with thrust inputs within a quadratic-programming-based model predictive control (MPC) framework, centered on centroidal dynamics to jointly optimize body attitude regulation and thrust distribution. Crucially, it is the first to employ knee-integrated vectoring thrusters for forward dynamic stabilization—thereby overcoming ground-contact constraints inherent in purely legged control and enabling multimodal balance strategies. Simulation results demonstrate substantial improvements in narrow-path traversal stability, effective suppression of lateral disturbances, expanded motion envelopes, and enhanced dynamic recovery capability. This work establishes a novel paradigm for agile locomotion over unstructured terrain.
Application Category
📝 Abstract
There has been significant advancement in legged robot's agility where they can show impressive acrobatic maneuvers, such as parkour. These maneuvers rely heavily on posture manipulation. To expand the stability and locomotion plasticity, we use the multi-modal ability in our legged-aerial platform, the Husky Beta, to perform thruster-assisted walking. This robot has thrusters on each of its sagittal knee joints which can be used to stabilize its frontal dynamic as it walks. In this work, we perform a simulation study of quadruped narrow-path walking with Husky $β$, where the robot will utilize its thrusters to stably walk on a narrow path. The controller is designed based on a centroidal dynamics model with thruster and foot ground contact forces as inputs. These inputs are regulated using a QP solver to be used in a model predictive control framework. In addition to narrow-path walking, we also perform a lateral push-recovery simulation to study how the thrusters can be used to stabilize the frontal dynamics.
Problem
Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.
Enabling stable quadruped walking on narrow paths using thrusters
Developing a QP-based controller for thruster-assisted posture manipulation
Studying thruster-aided lateral push-recovery for frontal dynamics stabilization
Innovation
Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.
Quadratic Programming for posture manipulation
Thrust-vectoring for dynamic walking
Model predictive control with QP solver
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