A New WholeBody Motion Generator and Adaptive Altitude Control for a QuadrupedOnWheel Robot

Abstract

This paper proposes a new wholebody motion generator for a quadrupedonwheel robot that can cross various rough terrains, especially with a muchaltitude difference. The motion generator combines the kinematics model, the wheelcenter motion model, the robot centroidal momentum and dynamics models, and a proposed altitudecontrol model. Then, the wholebody motion references can be achieved by giving the robot centroidalmotion reference, including the centroidal translational motion in the forward and lateral directions in the inertial frame, and the centroidalheight motion with respect to the base frame. Especially, the relative motion depends only on the robotself property and is independent of the terrain geometry. The robot is simulated to be driven on various tested rough terrains using our new motion generator and our compliant torque controller.