Control of Instantaneously Coupled Systems applied to humanoid walking

This paper presents an optimal controller for an Instantaneously Coupled System (ICS) which was designed by coordinating multiple lower-dimensional optimal controllers. We augmented subsystems of the ICS with coordination variables, and then used value functions to coordinate the augmented subsystems by managing tradeoffs of the coordination variables. We apply this method to humanoid walking and present a controller for a 3D simulation that uses multiple coordinated policies generated using Dynamic Programming. Additionally, we present simulated walking perturbation experiments as well as standing balance results from a force-controlled humanoid robot.