Walking on Partial Footholds Including Line Contacts with the Humanoid Robot Atlas

Understand

We present a method for humanoid robot walking on partial footholds such as small stepping stones and rocks with sharp surfaces.

• Our algorithm does not rely on prior knowledge of the foothold, but information about an expected foothold can be used to improve the stepping performance.
• After a step is taken, the robot explores the new contact surface by attempting to shift the center of pressure around the foot.
• The available foothold is inferred by the way in which the foot rotates about contact edges and/or by the achieved center of pressure locations on the foot during exploration.