An approach to stable walking on unknown slippery floor for biped robot

Abstract

In many studies, biped robots are controlled on the assumption that friction between the floor and the feet of the biped robot is large enough. This assumption is necessary for biped robots, because slipping of biped robots never happens on such a floor. But in a real environment, it is not necessarily true that all floors on which biped robot walks have enough friction. For the practical use of a biped robot, it is required to walk firmly on the any kinds of floor. The purpose of this paper is to realize walking, without slipping, on an unknown slippery floor. In this paper, an approach to detect slipping on slippery floor and a method for continuous walking on slippery floor are proposed. Computer simulations of a biped robot with 6 degrees of freedom are performed. The simulation results show that the effectiveness of the proposed method is superior to walking on unknown slippery floor.