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robotology-legacy / WBI-Toolbox-controllers

[WARNING]: this repository is no more mantained. Please refer to https://github.com/robotology/whole-body-controllers.
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Obtain geometry of the contact/support surface from the iCub skin #36

Closed traversaro closed 5 years ago

traversaro commented 7 years ago

Until now, the geometry of the contact surface (typically the sole of the feet) has been hardcoded in the controllers using the phys.footSize and gain.footSize parameters [1], that express the support area as a rectangle in the l_sole or r_sole frames. This information is important because it imposes the set of physical contact force/torques that the robot can exert on the contact surface without slipping or tipping.

For the CoDyCo Y4 Demo, we needed to balance the robot with the l_upper_leg/r_upper_leg links that are in contact with a side of the structural beam profiles, such as this one: 02_profilato_superleggero_b03-1_30x30__applicazione_big

As the beam profile is in contact only with part of the cover of the *_upper_leg link, we need to estimated online with part of the leg is actually in contact with the beam profile. This can be done with the iCub skin, but need some custom software.

[1] See for example : https://github.com/robotology-playground/WBI-Toolbox-controllers/blob/e88439c24bcaecd3f2bfad4629cf359073a154ea/controllers/torqueBalancing/app/robots/iCubGenova02/gains.m#L122 .

iron76 commented 7 years ago

👍 When you write "with part of the leg is actually in contact" you mean "which area of the leg is actually in contact"?

gabrielenava commented 5 years ago

After discussing with @Yeshasvitvs, we decided to close this issue as achieving a precise contact area size is not critical for the controller and the empirical size estimated by hand-measurements is enough for now. Closing