Simulation for "Momentum Control of an Underactuated Flying Humanoid Robot"

Dependencies and installation

To run the simulation scripts available in this repository, you need to have installed on your computer:

• Matlab/Simulink, at least version R2015b or following.
• WB-Toolbox

These dependencies (in particular WB-Toolbox) have their own dependencies, so the most convenient way to install them is through the robotology-superbuild. You can follow the instructions in https://github.com/robotology/robotology-superbuild/blob/master/README.md, following in particular the steps in https://github.com/robotology/robotology-superbuild/blob/master/README.md#dynamics to install the software that depends on Matlab/Simulink. Regarding the visualization of the robot movements, it is currently dependent on the iDyntree visualizer. In order to be able to use it, enable the options IDYNTREE_USES_MATLAB and IDYNTREE_USES_IRRLICHT by running ccmake ./ in iDyntree build directory. If the irrlicht library is not installed on your computer, you can install it by running sudo apt install libirrlicht-dev.

IMPORTANT: currently, WBToolbox 3.0 requires the yarpserver to be up and running in order to compile the model. Also, the from YARP to WBI Simulink block that is inside WBToolbox requires to read some ports that are opened when the iCub model is up and running in Gazebo. Therefore you need to run both yarpserver and the gazebo simulator on a terminal in order to be able to compile the Simulink model. Alternatively, you can void to open Gazebo by commenting out the Visualization block inside the Simulink model.

Running the simulation

Once you followed the installation instructions, you can replicate the experiments present in the paper by running the script. In particular, you can run the simulation of the underactuated flying humanoid robot by simulating the /matlab/momentum-based-flying/momentumBasedFlying.mdl Simulink model. The parameters, configuration options and reference trajectories for the simulation are specified in the matlab/simulinkModel/initMomentumBasedFlying.m matlab script, and in the scripts inside the app/robots/icubGazeboSim folder. By changing these script, you can replicate the results contained in the paper. In the next subsection we document how to run the different simulation experiments contained in the paper, by just changing a limited set of parameters.

Simulation 1a : piece-wise constant velocity trajectory without orientation control

• Set Config.references.variousDirFlight to true.
• Set Config.references.elicoidalFlight to false.
• Set Config.orientationControl to false.
• Set Config.testRobustness to false.

Simulation 1b : piece-wise constant velocity trajectory with orientation control

• Set Config.references.variousDirFlight to true.
• Set Config.references.elicoidalFlight to false.
• Set Config.orientationControl to true.
• Set Config.testRobustness to false.

Simulation 2 : helicoidal flight with orientation control and non-perfect control model to test controller robustness

• Set Config.references.variousDirFlight to false.
• Set Config.references.elicoidalFlight to true.
• Set Config.orientationControl to true.
• Set Config.testRobustness to true.