Locomotion Control With Slip Detection for Quadruped Robot, PongBot

Quadruped robots have excellent mobility, allowing them to overcome various terrains. For this reason, a growing body of research has explored quadruped robot locomotion control. Many prior studies have addressed state estimation for locomotion control. Most floating-body state estimations have used leg odometry, which assumes zero absolute velocity of the stance feet. However, this method may lead to inappropriate estimation when the stance feet slip. In this paper, we propose a novel slip detection method to increase the performance of body state estimation. In addition, we establish an entire locomotion control framework to validate the proposed method. Finally, we experimentally verify the proposed method by walking a quadruped robot, ‘PongBot’, weighing about 40 kgf, on uneven and soft terrain.