  The computational power of mobile robots is currently insufficient to achieve
torque level whole-body Model Predictive Control (MPC) at the update rates
required for complex dynamic systems such as legged robots. This problem is
commonly circumvented by using a fast tracking controller to compensate for
model errors between updates. In this work, we show that the feedback policy
from a Differential Dynamic Programming (DDP) based MPC algorithm is a viable
alternative to bridge the gap between the low MPC update rate and the actuation
command rate. We propose to augment the DDP approach with a relaxed barrier
function to address inequality constraints arising from the friction cone. A
frequency-dependent cost function is used to reduce the sensitivity to
high-frequency model errors and actuator bandwidth limits. We demonstrate that
our approach can find stable locomotion policies for the torque-controlled
quadruped, ANYmal, both in simulation and on hardware.

Robotics