ALPHRED: Autonomous Legged Personal Helper Robot with Enhanced Dynamics (IROS 2018)

This paper presents a multi-functioning light weight
robotic system, the Autonomous Legged Personal Helper Robot
with Enhanced Dynamics (ALPHRED), capable of both locomtion
and manipulation. In addition, we extended a 2D zero moment
point (ZMP) trajectory optimization (TO) algorithm to a 3D
implementation. As well as adding the acceleration of the
center of mass to the TO cost in order to smooth out the
motion of the robot during trajectories with support
polygons that do not intersect. By implementing this
versatile TO algorithm on a multi-modal robotic platform we
showed that many different forms of stable locomotion and
manipulation were possible including a dynamic 0.7 m/s trot
gait.