A Low Power Walk for the NAO Robot

Generally online walk pattern generators for humanoids are simplified, and don’t produce ideal gaits. Allowing the robot to ‘settle’ into a more natural gait through the modification of the low-level positional controller would provide significant benefits. In this paper we attempt to achieve this, by limiting the power available to each motor in a humanoid, hence restricting how rigidly the joint can follow the generated walk pattern. This approach was evaluated by implementing the control modification on a humanoid robotics platform. The results show a significant improvement in walk speed, efficiency, and robustness. Moreover, the approach used here could be easily applied to any walk pattern generator, as the modification is in the low-level positional control.