Towards Standardized Disturbance Rejection Testing of Legged Robot Locomotion with Linear Impactor: A Preliminary Study, Observations, and Implications

Dynamic locomotion in legged robots is close to industrial collaboration, but a lack of standardized testing obstructs commercialization. The issues are not merely polit- ical, theoretical, or algorithmic but also physical, indicating limited studies and comprehension regarding standard testing infrastructure and equipment. For decades, the approaches we have been testing legged robots were rarely standardizable with hand-pushing, foot-kicking, rope-dragging, stick-poking, and ball-swinging. This paper aims to bridge the gap by proposing the use of the linear impactor, a well-established tool in other standardized testing disciplines, to serve as an adaptive, repeatable, and fair disturbance rejection testing equipment for legged robots. A pneumatic linear impactor is also adopted for the case study involving the humanoid robot Digit. Three locomotion controllers are examined, including a commercial one, using a walking-in-place task against frontal impacts. The statistically best controller was able to withstand the impact momentum (26.376 kg · m/s) on par with a reported average effective momentum from straight punches by Olympic boxers (26.506kg·m/s). Moreover, the case study highlights other anti- intuitive observations, demonstrations, and implications that, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, are first-of-its-kind revealed in real-world testing of legged robots.