A Model-Based Approach to Calculating and Calibrating the Odometry for Quadruped Robots

This paper presents a model-based odometry calculation and calibration method (MBO) for quadruped robots. Instead of establishing the direct relation between target and actual speeds as previous methods did, MBO sets up a “parametric physical model” incorporating various properties of the robot and environment such as friction and inertia, through optimization with locomotor data. Based on this optimized model, one can compute the loci of robot legs’ movement by forward kinematics and finally obtain odometric readings by analyzing the loci. Experiments on Sony AIBO ERS-7 robots demonstrate that the odometry error of MBO is generally 50% less than the existing methods. In addition, the calibration complexity is low.