Perceptive Locomotion through Whole-Body MPC and Optimal Region Selection

Abstract--Real-time synthesis of legged locomotion maneuvers in challenging industrial settings is still an open problem, requiring simultaneous determination of footsteps locations several steps ahead while generating whole-body motions close to the robot's limits. State estimation and perception errors impose the practical constraint of fast re-planning motions in a model predictive control (MPC) framework. We first observe that the computational limitation of perceptive locomotion pipelines lies in the combinatorics of contact surface selection. Re-planning contact locations on selected surfaces can be accomplished at MPC frequencies (50-100 Hz). Then, whole-body motion generation typically follows a reference trajectory for the robot base to facilitate convergence. Our contributions are integrated into a complete framework for perceptive locomotion, validated under diverse terrain conditions, and demonstrated in challenging trials that push the robot's actuation limits, as well as in the ICRA 2023 quadruped challenge simulation. ELIABLE and autonomous locomotion for legged robots in arbitrary environments is a longstanding challenge. A. State of the art The hardware maturity of quadruped robots [1], [2], [3], [4] The mathematical complexity of the legged locomotion motivates the development of a motion synthesis framework problem in arbitrary environments is such that an undesired for applications including inspections in industrial areas [5]. Typically, a contact plan describing the contact handling the issues of contact decision (where should the robot locations is first computed, assumed to be feasible, and provided step?) and Whole-Body Model Predictive Control (WB-MPC) as input to a WB-MPC framework to generate wholebody of the robot (what motion creates the contact?). As a result, the contact decision Each contact decision defines high-dimensional, non-linear must be made using an approximated robot model, under the geometric and dynamic constraints on the WB-MPC that uncertainty that results from imperfect perception and state prevent a trivial decoupling of the two issues: How to prove estimation. The complexity of the approximated model has, that a contact plan is valid without finding a feasible wholebody unsurprisingly, a strong correlation with the versatility and motion to achieve it?