Anti-Gravity Walking by a Flying Humanoid Robot via Thrust-Rate Input Whole-Body Model Predictive Control

Abstract

Flying humanoids are expected to perform tasks in diverse environments, while their existing locomotion is mainly limited to aerial flight and ground walking. The capability to move in complex three-dimensional space can greatly expand their application range. For such walking motion on ceilings and similar anti-gravity environments, whole-body MPC is effective. However, the discontinuous changes in dynamic structure accompanying contact switching during walking can induce thrust spikes, resulting in control instability. Therefore, in this work, we propose and implement a real-time whole-body MPC framework for anti-gravity bipedal walking. First, we formulate whole-body MPC using the time derivative of thrust, namely thrust-rate, as the control input. This formulation guarantees continuity of the thrust trajectory during contact switching while preserving the sparse structure of the optimal control problem for real-time computation. Second, we address the lack of natural support forces in anti-gravity environments. We introduce lower bounds on the foot-normal component of the contact force, and smoothly transfer them during the double-support phase. Finally, we implement the proposed framework and demonstrate anti-gravity walking by a flying humanoid through simulation and a hardware experiment. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of multi-contact whole-body MPC for a transformable aerial robot and walking by a flying humanoid beyond the ground.