Robot locomotion
Robotics is an interdisciplinarity activity: whether you've practiced some signal processing, machine learning, control theory, numerical optimization, raptor hunting, etc., it helps! The following notes connect dots between the bits of knowledge I find most useful for locomotion in particular. I'd be most happy if they are a good fit for younger roboticists. Shoot me an e-mail if you find anything inaccurate or imprecise (yup, accuracy and precision are not the same thing).
All posts below assume you already know what a controller is. I imagine you've ended up here by searching for a particular topic, yet if you're rather exploring out of curiosity that's great too :-) In that case, I'd advise you start from the How do biped robots walk? overview and dig from there into any topic you find interesting.
Kinematics
Dynamics
- Constrained equations of motion
- Equations of motion
- Forward dynamics
- Inverse dynamics
- Newton-Euler equations
- Point de non-basculement
- Principle of virtual work
- Screw axes
- Screw theory
- Zero-tilting moment point
Contact dynamics
Walking
- Capture point
- Floating base estimation
- How do biped robots walk?
- Linear inverted pendulum model
- Prototyping a walking pattern generator
Models
Optimization
- Conversion from least squares to quadratic programming
- Inverse kinematics
- Least squares
- Quadratic programming
Science
See also
Physics
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An Introduction to Lagrange Multipliers
How Lagrange multipliers arise from optimization constraints.
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Gyroscopic precession
Experiments on angular momentum and torque.
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Integration Basics
How to integrate the equations of motion.
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The Principle of Least Action
A special lecture by Richard Feynman.
OpenRAVE
OpenRAVE is a C++/Python robotics software for forward kinematics and inverse dynamics of robot models. It provides other features not listed here such as symbolic inverse kinematics for serial manipulators. The pymanoid library adds whole-body inverse kinematics and model predictive control on top of it to prototype humanoid walking controllers.