Trajectory planning for pushing motion based on extended orbital energy of humanoid robot

This paper describes the trajectory planning for the pushing motion of a humanoid robot. In the design of a humanoid robot for pushing an object, it is necessary to take into account many parameters such as stride length, pushing force, and walking velocity. However, there are no standard methods for evaluating these parameters. Additionally, the robot may fall down if these parameters are not chosen correctly. In this paper, a method for determining these parameters for pushing motion is proposed. The extended orbital energy (EOE) is considered as the design index. Here, the EOE describes the relation between walking motion and pushing motion. By using the proposed method, the COG trajectory, pushing force and stride length can be modified on the basis of the EOE. In other words, the suitable values of theses parameters can be obtained by determining only the desired EOE. As a result, the humanoid robot walks stably during pushing motion. The effectiveness of the proposed method was confirmed by experimental results.