Fall prediction, control, and recovery of quadruped robots

Abstract

When legged robots perform complex tasks in unstructured environments, falls are inevitable due to unknown external disturbances. However, current research mainly focuses on the locomotion control of legged robots without falling. This paper proposes a comprehensive decision-making and control framework to address the falling over of quadruped robots. First, a capturability-based fall prediction algorithm is derived for planar single-contact and 3D multi-contact locomotion with a predefined gait sequence. For safe fall control, a novel contact-implicit trajectory optimization method is proposed to generate both state and input trajectories and contact mode sequences. Specifically, incorporating uncertainty into the system and terrain models enables mitigating the non-smoothness of contact dynamics while improving the robustness of the resulting trajectories. Furthermore, a model-free deep reinforcement learning-based approach is presented to achieve fall recovery after the robot completes a fall. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed fall prediction algorithm accurately predicts robot falls with up to 95% accuracy approximately 395ms in advance. Compared to classical locomotion controllers, which often struggle to maintain balance under significant pushes or terrain perturbations, the presented framework can autonomously switch to the fall controller approximately 0.06s after the perturbation, effectively preventing falls or achieving recovery with a threefold reduction in touchdown impact velocity. These findings highlight the effectiveness of the proposed framework in enhancing the stability and safety of legged robots in unstructured environments.