Zero-Moment Point - Thirty Five Years of its Life

This paper is devoted to the permanence of the concept of Zero-Moment Point, widelyknown by the acronym ZMP. Thirty-five years have elapsed since its implicit presentation (actually before being named ZMP) to the scientific community and thirty-three years since it was explicitly introduced and clearly elaborated, initially in the leading journals published in English. Its first practical demonstration took place in Japan in 1984, at Waseda University, Laboratory of Ichiro Kato, in the first dynamically balanced robot WL-10RD of the robotic family WABOT. The paper gives an in-depth discussion of source results concerning ZMP, paying particular attention to some delicate issues that may lead to confusion if this method is applied in a mechanistic manner onto irregular cases of artificial gait, i.e. in the case of loss of dynamic balance of a humanoid robot. After a short survey of the history of the origin of ZMP a very detailed elaboration of ZMP notion is given, with a special review concerning “boundary cases” when the ZMP is close to the edge of the support polygon and “fictious cases” when the ZMP should be outside the support polygon. In addition, the difference between ZMP and the center of pressure is pointed out. Finally, some unresolved or insufficiently treated phenomena that may yield a significant improvement in robot performance are considered.