Jet-powered robot baby shows robust flight control in simulations

The article discusses a significant advancement in flight control for the jet-powered humanoid robot iRonCub, developed by researchers at the Italian Institute of Technology. The team introduced a novel Model Predictive Control (MPC) framework that integrates both the robot’s fast joint actuators and slower jet engine dynamics through a multirate control design. This approach uses a linearized centroidal momentum model for flight dynamics combined with a nonlinear model for jet propulsion, allowing the controller to issue commands at rates suited to each actuator’s physical capabilities. Simulations in MuJoCo demonstrated the robot’s ability to maintain stable flight, recover from disturbances such as pushes causing pitching and rolling, and accurately track both smooth and aggressive flight trajectories. This research marks a step forward in combining walking robots with airborne mobility, with the iRonCub3 platform having recently achieved lift-off in the lab by hovering about 50 centimeters using four jet engines. The unified multirate MPC framework not only improves responsiveness and stability by embedding jet dynamics directly