Design of whole-body balancing and recovery control for humanoid robots

Humanoids are fascinating systems that can safely interact with environment and humans while performing highly dynamic tasks. The anthropomorphic shape is general and adaptable, although not always the most efficient. For instance, more legs can increase stability, and wheels can increase mobility. In the state-of-the-art, many ad-hoc whole-body controllers have been proposed for robots with the same humanoid torso but a different mobile base. Thus, it lacks a unique whole-body control framework for all of them. Furthermore, in addition to the controller, robots in the real world should self-recover their operational posture in the event of a fall. These are two of the main reasons preventing humanoid deployment in real-world scenarios. In this context, my Ph.D. dissertation proposes a novel whole-body control for two-wheeled humanoids, extendable to humanoids with different mobile bases, and novel whole-body recovery strategies for two-wheeled and legged humanoids.