  The kinematic features of a centaur-type humanoid platform, combined with a
powerful actuation, enable the experimentation of a variety of agile and
dynamic motions. However, the higher number of degrees-of-freedom and the
increased weight of the system, compared to the bipedal and quadrupedal
counterparts, pose significant research challenges in terms of computational
load and real implementation. To this end, this work presents a control
architecture to perform agile actions, conceived for torque-controlled
platforms, which decouples for computational purposes offline optimal control
planning of lower-body primitives, based on a template kinematic model, and
online control of the upper-body motion to maintain balance. Three stabilizing
strategies are presented, whose performance is compared in two types of
simulated jumps, while experimental validation is performed on a half-squat
jump using the CENTAURO robot.
