Towards high mobility and adaptive mode transitions: Transformable wheel-biped humanoid locomotion strategy

Area of Science:

• Robotics
• Mechatronics
• Control Systems

Background:

• Humanoid robots combine bipedal locomotion and manipulation.
• Wheeled robots offer enhanced mobility.
• Integrating both presents challenges in transitions and stability.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a transformable wheel-humanoid framework (TWHF) for enhanced mobility and adaptive transitions.
• To balance high-speed wheeling with bipedal functionality.
• To address challenges in transformable wheel-biped configurations (TWBC).

Main Methods:

• Introduced a novel key phase decomposition (KPD) methodology for analyzing transition motions.
• Employed particle swarm optimization-based motion optimization (PSOMO) with sagittal modeling.
• Developed a trunk-ankle collaborative control (TACC) strategy for terrain adaptability.

Main Results:

• The TWHF successfully integrates a compact, decoupled wheeled subsystem.
• Demonstrated stable hybrid locomotion across diverse terrains.
• Achieved wheeling speeds exceeding 10 km/h on the BHR8-2 robot.

Conclusions:

• The proposed TWHF effectively balances high-speed wheeling, seamless transitions, and bipedal locomotion.
• KPD, PSOMO, and TACC contribute to robust and adaptive hybrid locomotion.
• Validated the framework's effectiveness in real-world experimental settings.