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Common design principles for low cost humanoid robots include a low center of mass height and a large support area for increased static stability. However, such principles limit the bipedal mobility of the robot due to the kinematic constraints involved. In this paper, we present an efficient locomotion controller that utilizes automatically calculated heel and toe lift motions to overcome the kinematic...
When a humanoid robot traverses uneven terrain, such as stairs, possible footstep positions are constrained and the robot must take large strides. For robots with relatively short leg lengths, making such big strides is kinematically challenging. Possible solutions include lowering the torso height, relying on fast and dynamic stepping, and reducing foot size. However, all of these methods negatively...
This paper describes Team THOR's approach to sliding autonomy in manipulation and full body control of a disaster response robot for the 2015 DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) Finals. Under the duress of unpredictable bandwidth constraints, autonomous behaviors become critical for reducing response time and dealing with dynamic disturbances. However, the nature of disaster response presents situations...
This paper describes the hardware design and motion control algorithms that have been used by Team THOR in the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) Trials 2013 competition. The robotic hardware we use, the THOR-OP robot, consists of standardized and general purpose actuators and structural components, which greatly reduce the build and reconfiguration time and allows for quick field repair capability. Our...
Developing a reliable humanoid robot that operates in uncharted real-world environments is a huge challenge for both hardware and software. Commensurate with the technology hurdles, the amount of time and money required can also be prohibitive barriers. This paper describes Team THOR's approach to overcoming such barriers for the 2013 DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) Trials. We focused on forming modular...
Zero moment point (ZMP) preview controller is a widely adopted method for bipedal locomotion. However, for robots which are resource constrained or working in dynamic environments, simple reactive walk controllers are still favored as ZMP preview controllers have more control latency and are computationally more demanding. In this work, we present a hybrid walk controller that dynamically switches...
Bipedal humanoid robots will fall under unforeseen perturbations without active stabilization. Humans use dynamic full body behaviors in response to perturbations, and recent bipedal robot controllers for balancing are based upon human biomechanical responses. However these controllers rely on simplified physical models and accurate state information, making them less effective on physical robots...
Imitating the motion of a human operator is an intuitive and efficient way to make humanoid robots perform complex, human-like behaviors. With the help of recently introduced affordable and real-time depth sensors, the real time imitation of human behavior has become more feasible. However, due to their small footprint and high center of mass, humanoid robots are not inherently stable. The momentum...
During heavy work, humans utilize whole body motions in order to generate large forces. In extreme cases, exaggerated weight shifts are used to impart large impact forces. There have been approaches to design stable whole body impact motions based on precise dynamic models of the robot and the target object, but they have practical limitations as the uncertainty in the ensuing reaction forces can...
Generally, imitation of a motion means generation of a close motion to the observation. Moreover, it means that conversion into its own motion, which is adoptable to its body structure, by integrating with its prior knowledge. From this perspective, a new imitation scheme is proposed. The scheme is based on hidden Markov models by employing Viterbi algorithm. The proposed scheme enables to imitate...
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