Whole-Body Control for Multi-Contact Balancing of Humanoid Robots: Design and Experiments

This book aims at providing algorithms for balance control of legged, torque—controlled humanoid robots. A humanoid robot normally uses the feet for locomotion. This paradigm is extended by addressing the challenge of multi—contact balancing, which allows a humanoid robot to exploit an arbitrary number of contacts for support. Using multiple contacts increases the size of the support polygon, which in turn leads to an increased robustness of the stance and to an increased kinematic workspac...