Control of walking robots using virtual springs

At the Control Engineering group of the University of Twente, we are conducting research on control of bipedal robots. In our search for robust and energy efficient control, we are making extensive use of simulation. In order to facil- itate the development of algorithms, we want to design con- trollers that work in a space of “meaningful variables‿; i.e. we don’t control joint angles directly but we control things as “position and velocity of center of mass‿, “shape of the robot’s locked inertia ellipsoid‿ [1] and “foot position‿.