Exploiting Adaptability in Soft Feet for Sensing Contact Forces
Domenico Mura, Cosimo Della Santina, Cristina Piazza, Irene Frizza, Cecilia Morandi, Manolo Garabini, Giorgio Grioli, Manuel Giuseppe Catalano
Abstract
The large majority of legged robots currently employ ball-feet or flat-feet. More recently soft feet have been introduced, to improve walking performance on uneven grounds. Nevertheless, their novel adaptability requires sensor systems beyond traditional Force/Torque sensors to estimate the distribution of forces on the contact surface. This letter shows how a perception layer realized with Inertial Measurement Units allows a soft foot to reconstruct not only the shape of the foot - hinting at the shape of the ground beneath - but also, under precise hypotheses, the contact force distribution. The problem is theoretically formalized and analysed with a quasi-static approach in the Sagittal plane. Then, theoretical results are experimentally validated in a simplified foot-ground interaction scenario. The force reconstruction provided by the proposed method allows to correctly identify the sole contact location arising from obstacles with radius down to 1 cm.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{ral2020_exploitingadapta,
title = {Exploiting Adaptability in Soft Feet for Sensing Contact Forces},
author = {Domenico Mura and Cosimo Della Santina and Cristina Piazza and Irene Frizza and Cecilia Morandi and Manolo Garabini and Giorgio Grioli and Manuel Giuseppe Catalano},
booktitle = {RA-L 2020},
year = {2020}
}