Proprioceptive-Based Whole-Body Disturbance Rejection Control for Dynamic Motions in Legged Robots

This letter presents a control framework for legged robots that enables self-perception and resistance to external disturbances. First, a novel proprioceptive-based disturbance estimator is proposed. Compared with other disturbance estimators, this estimator possesses notable advantages in terms of filtering foot-ground interaction noise and suppressing the accumulation of estimation errors. Additionally, our estimator is a fully proprioceptive-based estimator, eliminating the need for any exteroceptive devices or observers. Second, we present a hierarchical optimized whole-body controller (WBC), which takes into account the full body dynamics, the actuation limits, the external disturbances, and the interactive constraints. Finally, extensive experimental trials conducted on the point-foot biped robot BRAVER validate the capabilities of the proposed estimator and controller under various disturbance conditions.