Development of a Leg Part of a Humanoid Robot—Development of a Biped Walking Robot Adapting to the Humans' Normal Living Floor

The authors are engaged in studies of biped walking robots from thefollowing two viewpoints. One is a viewpoint as a human science. Theother is a viewpoint towards the development of humanoid robots.In this paper, the authors introduce an anthropomorphic dynamic bipedwalking robot adapting to the humans' living floor. The robot has tworemarkable systems: (1) a special foot system to obtain the positionrelative to the landing surface and the gradient of the surfaceduring its dynamic walking; (2) an adaptive walking control system toadapt to the path surfaces with unknown shapes by utilizing theinformation of the landing surface, obtained by the foot system. Twounits of the foot system WAF-3 were produced, a biped walking robotWL-12RVII that had the foot system and the adaptive walking controlsystem installed inside it was developed, and a walking experimentwith WL-12RVII was performed. As a result, dynamic biped walkingadapting to humans' floors with unknown shapes was realized. Themaximum walking speed was 1.28 s/step with a 0.3 m step length, andthe adaptable deviation range was from -16 to+16 mm/step in the vertical direction, and from-3 to +3° in the tilt angle.     

Whole-Body Balance Control of a Humanoid Robot in Real Time Based on ZMP Stability Regions Approach

Abstract

One of the most important and complex tasks for a humanoid robot is to avoid overturning during a bipedal gait. This work aims at setting the base for designing a general balance controller to be used with any humanoid robot. In addition, it is based on a strong simplification of humanoid model which attempts to be used in real-time applications. In particular, several “stability zones” are defined as function of the criticalness of balance. The results are presented in simulation and experimentally, using the humanoid platforms HOAP-3 and TEO.     

Robot path planning in a constrained workspace by using optimal control techniques

Robot manipulators are programmable mechanical systems designed to execute a great variety of tasks in a repetitive way. In industrial environment, while productivity increases, cost reduction associated with robotic operation and maintenance can be obtained as a result of decreasing the values of dynamic quantities such as torque and jerk, with respect to a specific task. Furthermore, this procedure allows the execution of various tasks that require maximum system performance. By including obstacle avoidance ability to the robot skills, it is possible to improve the robot versatility, i.e., the robot can be used in a variety of operating conditions. In the present contribution, a study concerning the dynamic characteristics of serial robot manipulators is presented. An optimization strategy that considers the obstacle avoidance ability together with the dynamic performance associated with the movement of the robot is proposed. It results an optimal path planning strategy for a serial manipulator over time varying constraints in the robot workspace. This is achieved by using multicriteria optimization methods and optimal control techniques. Numerical simulation results illustrate the interest of the proposed methodology and the present techniques can be useful for the design of robot controllers. Commemorative contribution.     

Multi-Agent System-Based Fuzzy Controller Design with Genetic Tuning for a Mobile Manipulator Robot in the Hand Over Task

This paper presents an application of the multi-agent system approach to a service mobile manipulator robot that interacts with a human during an object delivery and hand-over task in two dimensions. The base, elbow and shoulder of the robot are identified as three different agents, and are controlled using fuzzy control. The control variables of the controllers are linear velocity of the base, angular velocity of the elbow, and angular velocity of the shoulder. Main inputs to the system are the horizontal and vertical distances between the human and robot hands. These are input to all three agents. In developing the fuzzy control rules, effective delivery and avoidance of contact with humans, not to cause physical damage, are considered. The membership functions of the fuzzy controllers are tuned by using genetic algorithms. In tuning, the performance is calculated considering the distance deviation from the direct path, time spent to reach the human hand and energy consumed by the actuators. The proposed multi-agent system structure based on fuzzy control for the object delivery task succeeded in both effective and safe delivery.