Modeling of Visco-Elastic Environments for Humanoid Robot Motion Control

Overview

Most humanoid walking controllers assume a rigid ground. This paper relaxes that assumption and introduces a visco-elastic environment model that captures the compliant interaction between the robot feet and soft terrain, enabling motion control where the contact surface deforms under load.

Method

• Visco-elastic contact model. Ground reaction forces are described through a compliant model that accounts for both elasticity and damping of the terrain.
• Motion control. The controller uses the model to remain stable when the support surface is deformable, where rigid-contact assumptions would fail.

Results

Experiments demonstrate motion control and walking on soft terrain, with reproducible simulations provided through a Docker image in the companion repository.