Real-Time Safe Bipedal Robot Navigation using Linear Discrete Control Barrier Functions

Understand

Safe navigation in real-time is an essential task for humanoid robots in real-world deployment.

• Since humanoid robots are inherently underactuated thanks to unilateral ground contacts, a path is considered safe if it is obstacle-free and respects the robot's physical limitations and underlying dynamics.
• Existing approaches often decouple path planning from gait control due to the significant computational challenge caused by the full-order robot dynamics.
• In this work, we develop a unified, safe path and gait planning framework that can be evaluated online in real-time, allowing the robot to navigate clustered environments while sustaining stable locomotion.