The Kinetics Observer: A Tightly Coupled Estimator for Legged Robots
The Kinetics Observer is a novel estimator that simultaneously estimates robot kinematics, contact forces, and perturbation forces for real-time odometry. It achieves tight coupling between whole-body dynamics and kinematics using a visco-elastic contact model within a Multiplicative Extended Kalman Filter (MEKF). This allows for accurate proprioceptive odometry on legged robots.