Theoretical Development and Experimental Validation of Residual Theory Based Collision Detection and Estimation on Legged Robot

This work presents a proprioceptive-based approach for estimating the forces acting on quadruped robots using standard sensor data only. Our approach leverages upon a momentum-based observer and needs joint torques, velocities, and IMU, to compute feet contact forces and the contact wrench acting on the mobile base. The force estimator has been implemented in Robot Operating System 2, realizing a flexible and robot-agnostic framework that is validated with simulated and real data. Our solution is able to estimate ground reaction forces with an error as low as 3.1\% of the robot’s mass.