Whole-Body Impedance Coordinative Control for a Wheel-Legged Robot on Uncertain Terrain
Lei Shi, Xinghua Yu, Cheng Zhou, Yuwei Du, Shuai Wang, Wanxin Jin, Yuquan Wang, Wanchao Chi
Abstract
This article proposes a whole-body impedance coordinative control framework for a wheel-legged humanoid robot to achieve adaptability on complex terrains while maintaining the robot's upper body stability. The framework contains a bi-level control strategy. The outer level is a variable-damping impedance controller, which optimizes the damping parameters to ensure the stability of the upper body while holding an object. The inner level employs whole-body control (WBC) optimization that integrates real-time terrain estimation based on wheel-foot position and force data. It generates motor torques while accounting for dynamic constraints, joint limits, friction cones, real-time terrain updates, and a model-free friction compensation strategy. The proposed whole-body coordinative control method, tested on a newly developed quadruped humanoid robot, effectively enables passive stable manipulation for both indoor water-carrying and outdoor box-carrying tasks across varying and uneven terrains.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{ral2026_wholebodyimpedan,
title = {Whole-Body Impedance Coordinative Control for a Wheel-Legged Robot on Uncertain Terrain},
author = {Lei Shi and Xinghua Yu and Cheng Zhou and Yuwei Du and Shuai Wang and Wanxin Jin and Yuquan Wang and Wanchao Chi and Shenghao Zhang and Dongsheng Zhang and Xiong Li and Zhengyou Zhang},
booktitle = {RA-L 2026},
year = {2026}
}