Slipping and Tripping Re exes for Bipedal Robots

|Many robot applications require legged robots to traverse rough or unmodeled terrain. This paper explores strategies that would enable legged robots to respond to two common types of surface contact error: slipping and tripping. Because of the rapid response required and the di culty of sensing uneven terrain, we propose a set of reexes that would permit the robot to react without modeling or analyzing the error condition in detail. These re exive responses allow robust recovery from a variety of contact errors. We present simulation trials for single-slip tasks with varying coe cients of friction and single-trip tasks with varying obstacle heights. Keywords| reactive control, re exes, rough terrain, slipping, tripping, biped locomotion