Impulse Analysis and Its Applications to Dynamic Environment

Impact is inevitable when an object contacts with environment. In robot control problem dealing with impact, research focus is on minimizing the ill performance due to impact. On the other hand, in some applications interacting with dynamic environment the amount of impact has to be controlled in a desired fashion. This is the case specially when playing with a ball. At the instant of impact, both the external impulse exerted on the ball and the internal impulse experienced at the joints of the human body must be important properties. A modeling procedure of impulses, impulse geometry, and impulse measure will be briefly introduced and a new impulse measure for analysis of internal impulse is proposed. Based on these analytical tools, we initially analyze the external and internal impulses through a simple 3-linked planar robot, and extend to applications interacting with dynamic environment such as in landing on the ground, volleyball, and tennis. It is shown through simulation that the trend of the impulses calculated by the analytical model is coincident to the human experiences.