Whole-Body Nonlinear Model Predictive Control Through Contacts for Quadrupeds

In this work we present a whole-body Nonlinear Model Predictive Control approach for Rigid Body Systems subject to contacts. We use a full dynamic system model which also includes explicit contact dynamics. Therefore, contact locations, sequences and timings are not prespecified but optimized by the solver. Yet, thorough numerical and software engineering allows for running the nonlinear Optimal Control solver at rates up to 190 Hz on a quadruped for a time horizon of half a second. This outperforms the state of the art by at least one order of magnitude. Hardware experiments in form of periodic and non-periodic tasks are applied to two quadrupeds with different actuation systems. The obtained results underline the performance, transferability and robustness of the approach.

A Primer on the Differential Calculus of 3D Orientations

The proper handling of 3D orientations is a central element in many optimization problems in engineering. Unfortunately many researchers and engineers struggle with the formulation of such problems and often fall back to suboptimal solutions. The existence of many different conventions further complicates this issue, especially when interfacing multiple differing implementations. This document discusses an alternative approach which makes use of a more abstract notion of 3D orientations. The relative orientation between two coordinate systems is primarily identified by the coordinate mapping it induces. This is combined with the standard exponential map in order to introduce representation-independent and minimal differentials, which are very convenient in optimization based methods.