System Design and Control of Anthropomorphic Walking Robot LOLA

This paper presents the 25-DOF full-size humanoid robot LOLA. Our goal is to realize fast and human-like walking. Furthermore, we want to increase the robot's autonomous, vision-guided walking capabilities. LOLA is characterized by a redundant kinematic configuration, an extremely lightweight design, joint actuators with brushless motors and an electronics architecture using decentralized joint control. Special emphasis was put on an improved mass distribution to achieve good dynamic performance. Center of mass trajectories are calculated in real-time from footstep locations using a spline collocation method. Reference trajectories are modified by a stabilizing control system based on hybrid force/position control with an inner joint position control loop.