Applications of IMU in Humanoid Robot

Humanoid robot is one of the most advanced subjects in robotics research field. As a recently developed multi-axis sensor, the inertial measurement unit (IMU) is an ideal sensor for measuring the attitude of a robot. Thus IMU plays an extremely important role in humanoid robots. In this chapter, the basis of IMU, which is divided into two parts, accelerometer and gyroscope, is introduced first. Both of the parts are described in detail, which include the composition, working principle, characteristic, classification, and function of IMU. Then several main signal processing methods of IMU are introduced. After that, the passage summarizes and analyzes the current development of IMU and introduces several typical products that integrate IMU. The main body of this passage introduces the application of IMU in humanoid robots in detail. The first part is about the role of IMU in control and gait planning for biped robot when it walks in uneven terrain. The second part describes IMU’s effect on the vibration monitoring and control of biped robots. Then anti-disturbance walking, fall detection, and dynamic balance control are introduced. Finally, the article summarizes the development trend of IMU applied in humanoid robots and analyzes possible problems that may occur in the future research of IMU.