Gait Planning for Soccer-Playing Humanoid Robots

Abstract

Gait planning for humanoid walking and penalty kicking, the two fundamental tasks for the current humanoid soccer competition, is addressed in this paper. First, an overview of some basic research issues in the field of humanoid robotics is presented. Humanoid walking gait planning in both joint space and Cartesian space is then discussed in a detailed way so as to make a clear comparison. By introducing some new concepts such as maximum kicking range and effective kicking range, a novel gait planning method for humanoid penalty kicking is also presented. All the proposed gait synthesizing methods have been successfully implemented on a soccer-playing humanoid robot, named Robo-Erectus, developed in Singapore Polytechnic.