Complex multibody legged robots can have complex rotational control challenges. In this paper, we propose a concise way to understand and formulate a whole-body orientation that (i) depends on system configuration only and not a history of motion, (ii) can be representative of the orientation of the entire system while not be attached to any specific link, and (iii) has a rate of change that approximates total system angular momentum. We relate this orientation coordinate to past work, and discuss and demonstrate, including on hardware, several different uses for it.
PDF@inproceedings{Chen2023,
title = {Integrable Whole-body Orientation Coordinates for Legged Robots},
author = {Chen, Yu-Ming and Nelson, Gabriel and Griffin, Robert and Posa, Michael and Pratt, Jerry},
booktitle = {IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)},
year = {2023},
month = oct,
arxiv = {2210.08111},
publisher = {https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10341531},
doi = {10.1109/IROS55552.2023.10341531},
youtube = {AZqAWImoAe4}
}