Motion Planning for Handspring Maneuver Using a Two Link Robot

Motion planning and control to generate human like walking with bipedal robots has been an active area of research for several decades. Besides walking, humans are capable of performing several other complex maneuvers using their limbs. A handspring is one such maneuver. During this acrobatic move, a person performs a complete revolution of the body by first placing her hands as if in a handstand, then pushing off of the floor with her hands to return to a standing position. Often, acrobats leverage the momentum from one handspring to perform a series of continuous back-to-back handsprings. In this paper, we present handspring trajectory planning for a simple two link robot using numerical optimization. We are able to generate near-periodic perpetual handspring-like maneuvers using two different actuation strategies (i) a constant torque at the hip joint, and (ii) an impulsive actuation to the imminent free leg.