Control

Whole-Body Control

Whole-body control (WBC) is a control framework that coordinates all of a robot's joints simultaneously to satisfy multiple prioritized objectives, such as maintaining balance, tracking an end-effector pose, and respecting contact and torque constraints. It is commonly formulated as a quadratic program over joint accelerations and contact forces solved at high rate, with strict or weighted task hierarchies arbitrating conflicts.

Why it matters for physical AI

Humanoids and mobile manipulators must balance, reach, and avoid limits at once, and whole-body controllers are the standard layer that turns task-space commands, increasingly emitted by learned policies, into dynamically consistent joint torques.