Height Control and Optimal Torque Planning for Jumping With Wheeled-Bipedal Robots

2026-05-04

AI Summary

This study addresses the challenge of precise jump-height control in wheeled bipedal robots, which is hindered by underactuation, nonlinear dynamics, and impulsive ground interactions, often leading to overshooting, excessive energy consumption, and large ground reaction forces. To overcome these issues, the authors propose a wheeled-jumping bipedal dynamics (W-JBD) model combined with a model-free Bayesian optimization torque planning (BOTP) method that efficiently generates smooth, optimal joint torque trajectories without requiring an accurate system model. Evaluated in Webots simulations, the approach converges within approximately 40 iterations, achieving an 82.3% reduction in jump-height error and a 26.9% decrease in energy consumption. These results demonstrate significantly improved control accuracy and energy efficiency, highlighting the method’s suitability for deployment on real-world robotic platforms.

Abstract

This paper mainly studies the accurate height jumping control of wheeled-bipedal robots based on torque planning and energy consumption optimization. Due to the characteristics of underactuated, nonlinear estimation, and instantaneous impact in the jumping process, accurate control of the wheeled-bipedal robot's jumping height is complicated. In reality, robots often jump at excessive height to ensure safety, causing additional motor loss, greater ground reaction force and more energy consumption. To solve this problem, a novel wheeled-bipedal jumping dynamical model(W-JBD) is proposed to achieve accurate height control. It performs well but not suitable for the real robot because the torque has a striking step. Therefore, the Bayesian optimization for torque planning method(BOTP) is proposed, which can obtain the optimal torque planning without accurate dynamic model and within few iterations. BOTP method can reduce 82.3% height error, 26.9% energy cost with continuous torque curve. This result is validated in the Webots simulation platform. Based on the torque curve obtained in the W-JBD model to narrow the searching space, BOTP can quickly converge (40 times on average). Cooperating W-JBD model and BOTP method, it is possible to achieve the height control of real robots with reasonable times of experiments.

Problem

• height control
• wheeled-bipedal robots
• jumping
• energy consumption
• underactuated systems

Innovation

• wheeled-bipedal robot
• jumping height control
• torque planning
• Bayesian optimization
• energy consumption optimization