Walking control in water considering reaction forces from water for humanoid robots with a waterproof suit

Abstract

In this paper, we develop a waterproof suit for humanoid robots and propose an underwater walking control method. Although very few life-sized humanoid robots are completely waterproof, we can easily make these humanoid robots watertight by putting a waterproof suit on them. In water, humanoid robots are influenced by the two forces due to the water: buoyancy and drag force. We take buoyancy into account when generating a walking pattern because the force is large and easy to estimate before walking. However, drag force is small and difficult to precisely predict and therefore, we treat the force as an unknown disturbance. In our method, we modify footsteps based on the Capture Point in order to deal with large disturbances. We verify the effectiveness of the proposed methods through an experiment in which a life-sized humanoid robot walks on a floor, stairs and debris in water.