Torque Saturation in Bipedal Robotic Walking Through Control Lyapunov Function-Based Quadratic Programs

This paper presents a novel method to address the actuator saturation for nonlinear hybrid systems by directly incorporating user-defined input bounds in a controller design. In particular, we consider the application of bipedal walking and show that our method [based on a quadratic programming (QP) implementation of a control Lyapunov function (CLF)-based controller] enables a gradual performance degradation while still continuing to walk under increasingly stringent input bounds. We draw on our previous work, which has demonstrated the effectiveness of the CLF-based controllers for stabilizing periodic gaits for biped walkers. This paper presents a framework, which results in more effective handling of control saturations and provides a means for incorporating a whole family of user-defined constraints into the online computation of a CLF-based controller. This paper concludes with an experimental validation of the main results on the bipedal robot MABEL, demonstrating the usefulness of the QP-based CLF approach for real-time robotic control.