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
- Newton-Euler equations
- Point de non-basculement
- Principle of virtual work
- Recursive Newton-Euler algorithm
- Screw axes
- Screw theory
- Zero-tilting moment point
Contact dynamics
Models
Walking
- Capture point
- Floating base estimation
- How do biped robots walk?
- Linear inverted pendulum model
- Prototyping a walking pattern generator
See also
Physics
-
Gyroscopic precession
Experiments on angular momentum and torque.
-
Integration Basics
How to integrate the equations of motion.
-
The Principle of Least Action
A special lecture by Richard Feynman.
Optimization
-
An Introduction to Lagrange Multipliers
How Lagrange multipliers arise from optimization constraints.
-
Conversion from least squares to quadratic programming
How to go from least squares to QP, which is slightly more general.
-
Quadratic programming in Python
The most common class of convex problems used in optimal control.
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. I used it in my PhD and developed the pymanoid library to add whole-body inverse kinematics and model predictive control to it for prototyping humanoid walking controllers.