Designing Synergistic Walking of a Whole-Body Humanoid Driven by Pneumatic Artificial Muscles: An Empirical Study

Our body consists of many body parts that are compliantly connected with each other by muscles and ligaments, and their behavior emerges out of the synergy of the whole-body dynamics. Such synergistic behavior generation is supposed to contribute to human adaptive movement such as walking. This paper describes designing synergistic walking of a whole-body humanoid robot whose joints are driven by artificial pneumatic muscles antagonistically. We propose to take an incremental design approach to deal with the complicated dynamics of the system. As a result, we can determine control parameters that govern whole-body behavior. We experimentally demonstrate that the humanoid walks stably with a simple limit-cycle controller.     

Control of giant swing motion of a two-link horizontal bar gymnastic robot

We investigated a control method to realize the three different types of free giant swing motions produced by a two-link horizontal bar gymnastic robot. By evaluating the eigenvalues of the transitional error matrix on the Poincare plane, it was found that the stable giant swing motions could be obtained by a proposed configuration control, in which the actuated joint torque is controlled such that the measured state variables follow the reference configuration with respect to the angular position of the passive joint. We also demonstrated that the two types of stable giant swing motions could be accomplished by the configuration method.     

A Framework for Automatic Generation of a Contact State Graph for Robotic Assembly

Dynamic manipulation of an active object is introduced as a general model of hopping and juggling tasks. In this setting, juggling and hopping are two extreme cases of this general model. Behavioral resemblance of these two tasks is afterwards extended to a detailed mathematical analogy between them. Then the analogy is exploited to develop a unified and abstract planning framework for juggling and hopping. To this end, dynamic manipulation of an active object is decomposed into three distinct phases and two transitions: Carry I, Free flight and Carry II phases. These phases are analogous to Lift off, Free flight and Touch down in hopping. In the next step, a mathematical model for each phase is developed. It is shown that dynamic grasp (in Carry phases of juggling) and foot stability (in Support phases of hopping) conditions share similar sets of dynamic equations. Accordingly, Lift off/Release and Touch down/Catch conditions in hopping/juggling are derived. It is shown that analogous strategies can be developed for Lift off and Release. The analogy is held for Touch down and Catch conditions as well. It is discussed that in the planning framework the initial and the goal configurations of the three phases are set in a model-based and forward manner. To do so, Touch down/Landing time, Free flight duration and robot/object maneuvers during Free flight are used as free parameters for planning in order to ensure foot stability in hopping and dynamic grasp in juggling along with other constraints.     

Stabilization control for biped follow walking

This paper proposes a follow-walking motion for biped humanoid robots based on a stabilization control and a complete walking-motion pattern. To follow human motion, the unit patterns of the trunk, the waist and the lower limbs are generated and synthesized. During the follow motion, the biped robots are balanced by the stabilization control that calculates the combined motion of the trunk and the waist that compensates for the moments produced by the motion of the lower limbs. For confirmation of the follow-walking motion, we have developed a life-sized humanoid robot, WABIAN-RII (WAseda BIped humANoid robot-Revised II). It has a total of 43 mechanical d.o.f.; two 6-d.o.f. legs, two 10-d.o.f. arms, a 4-d.o.f. neck, 4-d.o.f. in the eyes and a torso with a 3-d.o.f. waist.     

Generic Motion Planner for Robot Multi-fingered Manipulation

This paper addresses the dexterous manipulation planning problem, which deals with motion planning for a multi-fingered hand manipulating objects among static obstacles, under quasi-static movement assumption. We propose a general manipulation approach able to compute object and finger trajectories, as well as the finger relocation sequence, in order to link any two given configurations of the composite system hand + object. It relies on a topological property that characterizes the existence of solutions in the subspace of configurations where the object is grasped by the n fingers. This property helps reduce the problem by structuring the search space. The developed planner captures in a probabilistic roadmap the connectivity of submanifolds of the composite configuration space. The answer to the manipulation planning query is then given by searching a path in the computed graph. Simulation experiments are reported for different multi-fingered manipulation task examples showing the efficiency of the proposed method.     

Kinematic Discussion and Development of a Multi-Legged Planetary Exploration Rover with an Isotropic Leg Arrangement

This study deals with a multi-legged planetary rover with a spherically isotropic leg arrangement. The legged rover is a reliable rover system for exploration on rough terrains, because it can continue walking even after overturning. Moreover, the legged rover can also show a rotational motion by utilizing its isotropic shape. This paper discusses the walking performance of two types of rover shapes: one has a six-leg arrangement based on a regular octahedron and the other has an eight-leg arrangement based on a regular hexahedron. The design procedure of the proposed rover is explained, and a test-bed system, which is developed to demonstrate the fundamental motions, is also presented.     

Laser-Based Tracking of Human Position and Orientation Using Parametric Shape Modeling

Robots designed to interact socially with people require reliable estimates of human position and motion. Additional pose data such as body orientation may enable a robot to interact more effectively by providing a basis for inferring contextual social information such as people's intentions and relationships. To this end, we have developed a system for simultaneously tracking the position and body orientation of many people, using a network of laser range finders mounted at torso height. An individual particle filter is used to track the position and velocity of each human, and a parametric shape model representing the person's cross-sectional contour is fit to the observed data at each step. We demonstrate the system's tracking accuracy quantitatively in laboratory trials and we present results from a field experiment observing subjects walking through the lobby of a building. The results show that our method can closely track torso and arm movements, even with noisy and incomplete sensor data, and we present examples of social information observable from this orientation and positioning information that may be useful for social robots.     

Force and acceleration sensor fusion for compliant manipulation control in 6 degrees of freedom

This paper focusses on sensor fusion in robotic manipulation: six-dimensional (6-D) force/torque signals and 6-D acceleration signals are used to extract forces and torques caused by inertia. As result, only forces and torques established by environmental contact(s) remain. Apart from an improvement of hybrid force/pose control behavior, an additional major benefit is that regular resetting/zeroing of force/torque sensors before free space/contact transitions can be omitted. All essential equations, transformations and calculations that are required for this 6-D fusion approach are derived. To highlight the meaning for practical implementations, numerous experiments with a six-joint Staeubli RX60 industrial manipulator are presented and the achieved results are discussed.