Sensory reflex control for humanoid walking

Since a biped humanoid inherently suffers from instability and always risks tipping itself over, ensuring high stability and reliability of walk is one of the most important goals. This paper proposes a walk control consisting of a feedforward dynamic pattern and a feedback sensory reflex. The dynamic pattern is a rhythmic and periodic motion, which satisfies the constraints of dynamic stability and ground conditions, and is generated assuming that the models of the humanoid and the environment are known. The sensory reflex is a simple, but rapid motion programmed in respect to sensory information. The sensory reflex we propose in this paper consists of the zero moment point reflex, the landing-phase reflex, and the body-posture reflex. With the dynamic pattern and the sensory reflex, it is possible for the humanoid to walk rhythmically and to adapt itself to the environmental uncertainties. The effectiveness of our proposed method was confirmed by dynamic simulation and walk experiments on an actual 26-degree-of-freedom humanoid.