Capturability-based Analysis of Legged Robot with Consideration of Swing Legs
This work addresses a specific limitation in robot stability analysis for legged robotics, offering incremental improvements by integrating swing leg considerations into existing capturability frameworks.
The paper tackles the problem of analyzing legged robot capturability by incorporating swing leg dynamics, which were previously neglected, and finds that more powerful actuation and longer normalized step lengths increase capturability, while also determining step sequences that minimize actuation for given disturbances.
Capturability of a robot determines whether it is able to capture a robot within a number of steps. Current capturability analysis is based on stance leg dynamics, without taking adequate consideration on swing leg. In this paper, we combine capturability-based analysis with swing leg dynamics. We first associate original definition of capturability with a time-margin, which encodes a time sequence that can capture the robot. This time-margin capturability requires consideration of swing leg, and we therefore introduce a swing leg kernel that acts as a bridge between step time and step length. We analyze N-step capturability with a combined model of swing leg kernels and a linear inverted pendulum model. By analyzing swing leg kernels with different parameters, we find that more powerful actuation and longer normalized step length result in greater capturability. We also answer the question whether more steps would give greater capturability. For a given disturbance, we find a step sequence that minimizes actuation. This step sequence is whether a step time sequence or a step length sequence, and this classification is based on boundary value problem analysis.