Whole-body Force Control of the iCub Humanoid Robot for Balancing Tasks

This paper overviews the whole-body force control framework implemented on the iCub humanoid robot. This framework consists in a hierarchy of two tasks, where the highest priority task is a force control task, and the lowest one a postural task. Forces are regulated to stabilize a desired centroidal dynamics, i.e., a desired linear and angular momentum of the rigid body system. In turn, these forces are generated by the internal links’ torques, which are related to forces through the rigid constraint equations and the free-floating dynamics. Validation of the framework has been conducted on a real scenario involving the iCub robot balancing while subject to additional external forces.