cs.RONov 5, 2026

Whole-Body Elasto-Geometrical Calibration of Wheeled Humanoid Robots Using a Shared-Waist Dual-Chain Model

Authors: Pengxin Zha, Yi Lu, Haojun Ma, Jun Zhu, Minghao Qiu, Xiaoyan Wang, Wei Shan, Maoqing Yao

Organizations: The authors are with AgiBot, China.

Abstract

Wheeled humanoid robots carry both arms on one actuated waist, usually without torque sensors, so the accuracy of both end-effectors depends on a single waist model. After a first stage that estimates the tracker and target extrinsics, we identify the waist and both arms in one problem from the target positions on both flanges, measured by an optical tracker. The kinematic model is complete, with waist-base, parallel-axis, and branch parameters; arm compliances are driven by measured torques and waist compliances by gravity torques of the robot's mass model; and Gaussian priors with evidence-maximizing scales stabilize the estimate. Independent and sequential single-chain calibration are restrictions of this problem, and its waist information is the sum of the single-chain Schur complements. On two robots with different waists, each without and with a payload, calibration reduces the mean errors on held-out poses from 11.3-31.1 mm to 0.50-1.11 mm. For every training-set size from 20 poses to all, the method has 17-63% lower mean errors than adaptations of two published whole-body calibration methods, mainly through the waist compliance. Independent calibration yields two waist models; using either for both arms raises the other arm's error to up to 3.21 mm.

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