Special issue on whole-body control of contacts and dynamics for humanoid robots

Abstract

Whether you are walking on a concrete floor, standing on a carpet, or sitting on a soft chair, your entire body continuously controls the posture and the contact forces that are produced by acting on rigid and compliant surfaces. Sometimes, like when reaching for a distant object or standing inside a moving bus that suddenly brakes, humans plan intentionally new contacts to preserve their balance and avoid falling. For humanoid robots to act in unstructured natural environments as humans do, contacts and physical interactions are necessary and unavoidable. This special issue of the Autonomous Robots journal aims at presenting the advances in whole-body control of real robots, focusing on control and learning techniques applied to estimation, control and adaptation of whole-body dynamics movement and contact forces that go beyond basic balancing abilities.