An intelligent joystick for biped control

We present the concept of an "intelligent" joystick, an architecture which provides simple and intuitive high-level directional control of a legged robot while adjusting the actual foot placements autonomously to avoid stepping in undesirable places. The general concept can be likened to riding a horse: high-level commands are provided, while the "intelligence" of the underlying system selects proper foot placements with respect to the shape and properties of the underlying terrain and overall balance considerations. We demonstrate a prototype system used for realtime control of the humanoid robot HRP-2