Multicontact Postures Computation on Manifolds

Abstract

We propose a framework to generate static robot configurations satisfying a set of physical and geometrical constraints. This is done by formulating nonlinear constrained optimization problems over non-Euclidean manifolds and solving them. To do so, we present a new sequential quadratic programming solver working natively on general manifolds and propose an interface to easily formulate the problems, with the tedious and error-prone work automated for the user. We also introduce several new types of constraints for having more complex contacts or working on forces/torques. Our approach allows an elegant mathematical description of the constraints and we exemplify it through formulation and computation examples in complex scenarios with humanoid robots.