166 accepted papers
In order to make robots more useful in a variety of environments, they need to be highly portable so that they can be transported to wherever they are needed, and highly storable so that they can be stored when not in use. We propose "on-site robotics", which uses parts procured at the location wher…
To give the single robot system the ability to realize many behaviors and to realize tasks with shifting environments and objectives, it is necessary to abstract the robot’s body ability to the extent that they can be detected by sensors in the body so that we can plan as the problem of state transi…
Various robots have been developed so far; however, we face challenges in modeling the low-rigidity bodies of some robots. In particular, the deflection of the body changes during tool-use due to object grasping, resulting in significant shifts in the tool-tip position and the body’s center of gravi…
The complex ways in which humans utilize their bodies in sports and martial arts are remarkable, and human motion analysis is one of the most effective tools for robot body design and control. On the other hand, motion analysis is not easy, and it is difficult to measure complex body motions in deta…
The state recognition of the environment and objects by robots is generally based on the judgement of the current state as a classification problem. On the other hand, state changes of food in cooking happen continuously and need to be captured not only at a certain time point but also continuously
A wire-driven parallel robot is a type of robotic system where multiple wires are used to control the movement of a end-effector. The wires are attached to the end-effector and anchored to fixed points on external structures. This configuration allows for the separation of actuators and end-effector…
One of the most important features of tendon-driven robots is the ease of wire arrangement and the degree of freedom it affords, enabling the construction of a body that satisfies the desired characteristics by modifying the wire arrangement.Various wire arrangement optimization methods have been pr
In this paper, we explain the Morphable StateNet as the StateNet with pseudo-generalized behaviors for robots with various degree-of-freedom arrangements and link lengths. Pseudo-generalization is performed by analytically calculating joint angles that satisfy the desired support conditions, focusin…
Exoskeletons for robot operation necessitate shoulders with high range of motions and high degrees of freedom to fit the operator’s shoulder girdle. These shoulder joints need high torque for force feedback on the operator. Existing exoskeletons struggle to simultaneously meet these requirements of…
We propose the method to adapt humanoids the ability to change the body structures that modular robots have by using Attach-Lock-Detachable Magnetic Couplings(ALDMag) to give the ability to detach and attach the robot body with an arm-type robot, and the system to manage the connection state of modu…
Transferring human motion skills to humanoid robots remains a significant challenge. In this study, we introduce a Wasserstein adversarial imitation learning system, allowing humanoid robots to replicate natural whole-body locomotion patterns and execute seamless transitions by mimicking human motio…
For humanoid whole body contact motions, it is important to recognize the existence of whole body contacts and the contact forces. The challenges in recognizing the existence of whole body contacts and the contact forces in life-size humanoids are: 1) the measurement part with low mechanical strengt…
Muscles of the human body are composed of tiny actuators made up of myosin and actin filaments. They can exert force in various shapes such as curved or flat, under contact forces and deformations from the environment. On the other hand, muscles in musculoskeletal robots so far have faced challenges
Robots generally have a structure that combines rotational joints and links in a serial fashion. On the other hand, various joint mechanisms are being utilized in practice, such as prismatic joints, closed links, and wire-driven systems. Previous research have focused on individual mechanisms, propo…
In this study, we present an implementation strategy for a robot that performs peg transfer tasks in Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery (FLS) via imitation learning, aimed at the development of an autonomous robot for laparoscopic surgery. Robotic laparoscopic surgery presents two main challenges:…
Improving the safety of collaborative manipulators necessitates the reduction of inertia in the moving part. Within this paper, we introduce a novel approach in the form of a passive 3D wire aligner, serving as a lightweight and low-friction power transmission mechanism, thus achieving the desired l
A robotic hand for social interaction should be capable of comfortable touch with humans. However, it is difficult to mount skin, tactile sensors, and driving mechanism required for human contact, especially holding hands, on a slender finger. In addition, in order to unitize the hand for easy use w…
The range of robot activities is expanding from industries with fixed environments to diverse and changing environments, such as nursing care support and daily life support. In particular, autonomous construction of robots that are personalized for each user and task is required. Therefore, we devel…
In this paper, we focus on the kangaroo, which has powerful legs capable of jumping and a soft and strong tail. To incorporate these unique structure into a robot for utilization, we propose a design method that takes into account both the feasibility as a robot and the kangaroo-mimetic structure. B…
Humanoids are versatile robotic platforms owing to their limbs with multiple degrees of freedom. Although humanoids can walk like humans, they are relatively slow, and cannot run over large barriers. To address these limitations, we aim to achieve rapid terrestrial locomotion ability and simultaneou
Robot hands that imitate the shape of the human body have been actively studied, and various materials and mechanisms have been proposed to imitate the human body. Although the use of soft materials is advantageous in that it can imitate the characteristics of the human body's epidermis, it increase…
Imitation learning has been actively studied in recent years. In particular, skill acquisition by a robot with a fixed body, whose root link position and posture and camera angle of view do not change, has been realized in many cases. On the other hand, imitation of the behavior of robots with float…
We need to build robot systems that can operate in multiple environments, including underwater. For a robot to be waterproof, it needs to be covered all over its body and have a waterproof structure, but this is expensive to produce and consumes hardware resources such as weight. In this study, we p…
In order for a humanoid robot to traverse uneven terrain without falling over, the robot must control its landing position appropriately. To determine the landing position, there are two difficulties in terrain recognition and leg motion control. In terrain recognition, it is difficult to recognize…
It is important for daily life support robots to detect changes in their environment and perform tasks. In the field of anomaly detection in computer vision, probabilistic and deep learning methods have been used to calculate the image distance. These methods calculate distances by focusing on image…
State recognition of objects and environment in robots has been conducted in various ways. In most cases, this is executed by processing point clouds, learning images with annotations, and using specialized sensors. In contrast, in this study, we propose a state recognition method that applies Visua…
Humanoids operate in repeated contact and non-contact with their environment and so the motion of humanoids such as walking on uneven terrain or in a narrow space requires the accurate force and position control. Joint torque control systems are suitable for position and force control, but are prone…
In order for a humanoid robot to balance on the movable ground, balance feedback control in response to its unpredictable movement is required. However, feedback control in response to ground movement has the following two issues, (A) Interaction between the ground dynamics and the balance control m…
One of the important advantages of musculoskeletal humanoids is that the muscle arrangement can be easily changed and the number of muscles can be increased according to the situation. In this study, we describe an overall system of muscle addition for musculoskeletal humanoids and the adaptive body
In recent years, an increasing number of research works have been focusing on the manipulation by aerial robots. Previous works using aerial robots with robotic arms have two problems: underactuation and external disturbances. We propose the fully-actuated control method and motion strategy using co…
For robots to move in the real world, they must first correctly understand the state of its own body and the tools that it holds. In this research, we propose DIJE, an algorithm to estimate the image Jacobian for every pixel. It is based on an optical flow calculation and a simplified Kalman Filter…
The humanoid robot that can transform itself into a form according to its purpose requires whole-body motions with complex contact state transitions such as recovery from a fall and transition to the target form. To make the robot behavior in simulations closer to that in the real world for planning…
Articulated aerial robots, which comprise multiple link units connected by joints, can change their shapes during flight to perform advanced aerial manipulation. The more links indicate a higher ability to handle larger objects. The critical challenge with the increase in the number of link units is
Aerial manipulation is a growing field of research, and multirotors with attached arm manipulator have shown practical utility in contact-based inspection. However, theses coupled platforms limit the pose reachability of the end-effector, which then motivates the development of omni-directional desi
In the literature on object grasping, the robot often determines the grasp point and posture from visual information. They predict the grasping point uniquely from the object's shape characteristics. However, as a practical matter, there are cases where there are constraints on grasp point due to th…
There is a way to utilize humanoid robots to mimic human behavior by taking advantage of their human-like proportions. In general, motion capture is used; in this case, the posture of the body links can be taken. However, this method does not provide detailed information on the contact state, which…
Humanoid robots are versatile platforms with the potential for multiple locomotion skills. However, this contact-switched system with only two contact feet is fragile to keep balance in many scenarios. Inspired by birds combining legs and wings, we propose the novel hybrid locomotion behavior for th…
The musculoskeletal humanoid is difficult to modelize due to the flexibility and redundancy of its body, whose state can change over time, and so balance control of its legs is challenging. There are some cases where ordinary PID controls may cause instability. In this study, to solve these problems…
While the musculoskeletal humanoid has various biomimetic benefits, its complex modeling is difficult, and many learning control methods have been developed. However, for the actual robot, the hysteresis of its joint angle tracking is still an obstacle, and realizing target posture quickly and accur…
Legged robots with high locomotive performance have been extensively studied, and various leg structures have been proposed. Especially, a leg structure that can achieve both continuous and high jumps is advantageous for moving around in a three-dimensional environment. In this study, we propose a p…
In this study, seated walk, a movement of walking while sitting on a chair with casters, is realized on a musculoskeletal humanoid from human teaching. The body is balanced by using buttock-contact sensors implemented on the planar interskeletal structure of the human mimetic musculoskeletal robot.…
When robots walk on uneven terrain, trajectory planning should take into account both the whole-body dy-namics and the ground geometry simultaneously. In uneven terrain environments, there are only a limited number of places where the robot is able to make stable contact with the ground without its…
In this study, we investigate object grasping by visual servoing in a low-rigidity robot. It is difficult for a low-rigidity robot to handle its own body as intended compared to a rigid robot, and calibration between vision and body takes some time. In addition, the robot must constantly adapt to ch
There is increasing demand for robots that provide a mode of transportation in environments in which people coexist. However, conventional mobile robots, especially those carrying people, are limited in terms of their environments and tasks. For example, wheeled robots are limited to moving on flat…
Various robotic tool manipulation methods have been developed so far. However, to our knowledge, none of them have taken into account the fact that the grasping state such as grasping position and tool angle can change at any time during the tool manipulation. In addition, there are few studies that
For a robot with redundant sensors and actuators distributed throughout its body, it is difficult to construct a controller or a neural network using all of them due to computational cost and complexity. Therefore, it is effective to extract functionally related sensors and actuators, group them, an
The purpose of this paper is the robotic hanging manipulation of an object of various shapes that is not limited to a specific category. To achieve this, we propose a method that allows the estimator to learn many different shapes with hanging points without any manual annotation. A random shape gen…
In this paper, we aim to recognize function points of category-agnostic objects and perform object manipulation. To recognize function points of various shapes, it is necessary to train with a large amount of training data. Also, it is necessary to take into account not only visual information but a…
We have implemented a force-based operational space controller on a physical musculoskeletal humanoid robot arm. The controller calculates muscle activations based on a biomimetic Hill-type muscle model. We propose a method to include the joint torque nullspace in the optimization process, which ena…
Quadrupedal robots are skillful at locomotion tasks while lacking manipulation skills, not to mention dexterous manipulation abilities. Inspired by the animal behavior and the duality between multi-legged locomotion and multi-fingered manipulation, we showcase a circus ball challenge on a quadrupeda…
In this study, we propose an algorithm that enables the active learning of a manipulation skill that is robust to the estimation error of an object's position. First, we propose the concept of a feasible error region (FER) unique to each manipulation parameter. As the name implies, FER is a region o
Musculoskeletal humanoids have various biomimetic advantages, and the redundant muscle arrangement allowing for variable stiffness control is one of the most important. In this study, we focus on one feature of the redundancy, which enables the humanoid to keep moving even if one of its muscles brea…
We report the results of our study on whether taking a walk with a child-like robot that a person takes care of can generate interaction with the surrounding people whom the person has never met before. As the number of single-person households increases, it is expected that more people will live wi…
We developed a method to enable a humanoid robot to carry stacked boxes. In order to transport objects efficiently, it is necessary to carry multiple objects at the same time, but in previous studies, humanoid robots have only been able to carry a single object. When a humanoid robot carries stacked…
Fall recovery after falling over is a critical feature for biped robots that work in the real world. We propose a method by considering robot joint angle trajectory as a multivariable function of time and orientation of robot root links. Compared with the conventional method, our method required les
The multilinked or modular structure is one of the state-of-the-art topics in aerial robot field. One type of the multilinked aerial robot called DRAGON containing a two degree-of-freedom (DoF) force vectoring apparatus in each link has been developed in our previous work to augment both maneuvering
In this study, we propose a predictive model composed of a recurrent neural network including parametric bias and stochastic elements, and an environmentally adaptive robot control method including variance minimization using the model. Robots which have flexible bodies or whose states can only be p…
Precise aerial manipulation is important for multirotor robots. For multirotors equipped with arms, the root pose error due to the floating body affects the precision at the end effector. Fixed-root approaches, such as perching on surfaces using the rotor suction force, are useful to address this pr…
Imitation learning is one of the methods for reproducing human demonstration adaptively in robots. So far, it has been found that generalization ability of the imitation learning enables the robots to perform tasks adaptably in untrained environments. However, motion styles such as motion trajectory
In recent years, there has been a great deal of research on teleoperation of robots, and many end-effector-oriented control systems have been proposed, but these systems have difficulties in performing manipulation tasks with physical contacts between the target object, the robot, and the environmen
Self-healing function is a promising approach for damage management of high-load robot applications such as legged robots. Although the function is getting major in soft robotics, its application to life-sized "stiff" robots is of relatively minor interest. Although the authors have devised several…
We proposed a method for learning the actual body image of a musculoskeletal humanoid for posture generation and object manipulation using inverse kinematics with redundancy in the shoulder complex. The effectiveness of this method was confirmed by realizing automobile steering wheel operation. The
Two-dimensional multilinked structures can benefit aerial robots in both maneuvering and manipulation because of their deformation ability. However, certain types of singular forms must be avoided during deformation. Hence, an additional 1 Degrees-of-Freedom (DoF) vectorable propeller is employed in
We consider the problem of acquiring mechanical knowledge through visual cues to help robots use objects in new situations. In this work, we propose a novel deep learning approach that allows a robot to acquire mechanical knowledge from 3D point clouds. This presents two main challenges. The first c…
Regrasping is one of the most common and important manipulation skills used in our daily life. However, aerial regrasping has not been seriously investigated yet, since most of the aerial manipulator lacks dexterous manipulation abilities except for the basic pick-and-place. In this paper, we focus…
The musculoskeletal humanoid has various biomimetic benefits, and it is important that we can embed and evaluate human reflexes in the actual robot. Although stretch reflex has been implemented in lower limbs of musculoskeletal humanoids, we apply it to the upper limb to discover its useful applicat…
This paper describes basic implementation of an embedded controller board based on a hybrid architecture equipped with an Intel FPGA SoC and an NVIDIA GPU SoC. Embedded distributed network involving motor-drivers or other embedded boards is constructed with low-latency optical transmission link. The…
We describe a system design approach for the bilateral teleoperation of a humanoid robot. We have focused on bipedal stability and 2D/3D locomotion space problems. Our proposed system has two robot hardware and two control software. The master side hardware is newly developed seat-type whole-body ex
In this research, we have taken a biomimetic approach to the control of musculoskeletal humanoids. A controller was designed based on the motor directional tuning phenomenon seen in the motor cortex of primates. Despite the simple implementation of the control scheme, complex coordinated movements s…
Juggling manipulation is one of difficult manipulation to acquire since some of such manipulation is unstable and also its physical model is unknown due to the complex non-prehensile manipulation. To acquire these unstable unknown-dynamics juggling manipulation, we propose a method for designing the…
For mitigating joint impact torques, researchers have reduced joint stiffness by series elastic actuators, reflected inertia by low gear ratios, and friction torque from drive-trains. However, these impact mitigation methods may impair the control performance of contact forces or may increase motor…
The estimation and management of motor temperature are important for the continuous movements of robots. In this study, we propose an online learning method of thermal model parameters of motors for an accurate estimation of motor core temperature. Also, we propose a management method of motor core
The musculoskeletal humanoid has various biomimetic benefits, and the redundant muscle arrangement is one of its most important characteristics. This redundancy can achieve fail-safe redundant actuation and variable stiffness control. However, there is a problem that the maximum joint angle velocity…
In this work, we propose a system for humanoid robot fast motions. When a humanoid robot performs a motion such as a tennis forehand stroke motion, a whole-body fast motion in reaction to visual information is required. There are three problems to tackle. (1) Motion is desired to be quick. (2) Real-…
Maintaining dynamic balance is an important requirement for bipedal robots. To deal with large disturbances, the footsteps need to be modified depending on the disturbance. Currently, there are few methods that determine footsteps by considering foothold constraints and the balance of the robot. In
It is necessary to use not only foot but also hand, knee and other body parts to support body weight for locomotion in uneven terrain. Such multi-contact motion planning is an important research topic including lots of previous works; however, a problem of computational speed of planning is still re…
The purpose of this study is to make life-sized humanoid robots acquire tool manipulation skills that require complicated force adjustment. The difficulty in acquisition of tool manipulation skills comes from the hardship in physical modeling. Recent research have revealed that deep reinforcement le…
Carrying payloads in air is a major mission for multirotor aerial robot. However, the presence of payloads on multirotor aerial robot has a risk of degrading the performance of the flight controller. This concern becomes obvious especially when carrying objects not securely attached to the body or p…
While the musculoskeletal humanoid has various biomimetic benefits, the modeling of its complex structure is difficult, and many learning-based systems have been developed so far. There are various methods, such as control methods using acquired relationships between joints and muscles represented b
The flexible musculoskeletal hand is difficult to modelize, and its model can change constantly due to deterioration over time, irreproducibility of initialization, etc. Also, for object recognition, contact detection, and contact control using the hand, it is desirable not to use a neural network t
This study presents an approach for acquiring model parameters of close-range approximate proximity sensors on a robot hand using long-range distance sensors while that hand is grasping an object. The acquired models are used to generate a precise close-range distance output. We aim herein to acquir
State-of-the-art work on deformable multirotor aerial robots has developed a strong maneuvering ability in such robots, whereas there is no versatile aerial robot that can perform both deforming maneuvering and aerial manipulation yet. However, a novel multilinked aerial robot presented in our previ
Humanoid robots are expected to play a big role at distress sites and disaster sites. There is a variety of multi-contact locomotion forms other than bipedal walking such as crawling through tightly, getting on the rubble by using its knees and elbows, or jumping in and rolling over the obstacles. I…
Whole-body contact is an effective strategy for improving the stability and efficiency of the motion of robots. For robots to automatically perform such motions, we propose a posture generation method that employs all available surfaces of the robot links. By representing the contact point on the bo
Stable flight control under ceilings is difficult for multirotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). The wake interaction between rotors and upper walls, called the "ceiling effect", causes an increase of rotor thrust. As a result of the thrust increase, multi-rotors are drawn upward abruptly and colli…
The flexible under-actuated musculoskeletal hand is superior in its adaptability and impact resistance. On the other hand, since the relationship between sensors and actuators cannot be uniquely determined, almost all its controls are based on feedforward controls. When grasping and using a tool, th…
Transformable aerial robots are favorable in aerial manipulation tasks for their flexible ability to change configuration during the flight. By assuming robot keeping in the mild motion, the previous researches sacrifice aerial agility to simplify the complex non-linear system into a single rigid bo…
Self-healing robotics has been of considerable interest. We believe the function will have a major role in legged robots as a typical high-load application of robotics. Some pioneering works have been ongoing on self-healing soft robots. However, the development of large load self-healing component…
Humanoid robots are expected to conduct tasks on behalf of humans in places such as a disaster scattered environment. Although humanoid robots have potentials to walk on uneven ground unlike wheeled robots, it is difficult to reach a given destination without falling down based on only visual inform…
To develop Musashi as a musculoskeletal humanoid platform to investigate learning control systems, we aimed for a body with flexible musculoskeletal structure, redundant sensors, and easily reconfigurable structure. For this purpose, we develop joint modules that can directly measure joint angles, m…
As robots start to execute complex manipulation tasks, they are expected to improve their skill set over time as humans do. A prominent approach to accomplish this is having robots to keep models of their actions based on their experiences in order to improve their action executions in the future. I…
We proposed the soft flexible wire-driven finger mechanism with the soft skin and the multi-joint skeletal structure using two coil springs. The multi-joint skeletal structure is mainly composed of two coil springs, multiple skeletal members and a fiber wire, and the soft skin is formed outside of t…
We present a novel transformable multilinked aerial robot which consists of link modules with 1 DoF thrust vectoring mechanism. Commonly used UAV is underactuated due to its simplicity and high flight duration, but can not control the position and orientation independently. To overcome this problem,…
In order to achieve tasks in the real world environment, humanoid robots have motors and reduction drives optimized in relation to weight and size for providing the necessary torque and angle speed. Therefore, having torque or angle speed outside of the predicted range will usually cause the task to…
In this letter, we propose a three-dimensional (3-D) walking and skating motion generation method to achieve sequential walking and skating motion with skateboard and roller skate. For generating the sequential stable skating motion using a passive wheel, we must deal with non-coplanar contacts with
External wrench estimation is very helpful for aerial exploration and manipulation tasks. During the exploration, there might be unseen obstacles to cause dangerous collisions. The estimation of the external force and torque is also beneficial in aerial manipulation tasks. In this paper, we present…
To realize a robust automobile driving behavior of musculoskeletal tendon-driven humanoids, we developed a six-axis force measurement module with a core-shell structure. This sensor enables space saving, high load capacity and wholebody sensing at the same time. By developing a foot unit incorporati…
When a humanoid robot manipulates a heavy object, balance and heavy loads become problems. To solve these problems, we provide a method to generate a key pose sequence of the robot and the object which balance constraints and joint torque limits are kept. As we consider the configurations of both th…
Recent progress of deep learning improved the capability of a robot to find a proper grasp of a novel object for different grasp modalities (e.g., pinch and suction). While these previous studies consider multiple modalities separately, several studies develop multi-modal grippers that can achieve s…
We present a torque controller for humanoid robot's arm and a method to execute heavy-load tasks under that controller. Torque control of arms can reduce the joint load when an impulsive force is applied to the robot's hand. This feature is important for robots that will work among many humans or ob…
We present joint learning of instance and semantic segmentation for visible and occluded region masks. Sharing the feature extractor with instance occlusion segmentation, we introduce semantic occlusion segmentation into the instance segmentation model. This joint learning fuses the instance-and ima…
The tendon-driven musculoskeletal humanoid has many benefits that human beings have, but the modeling of its complex muscle and bone structures is difficult and conventional model-based controls cannot realize intended movements. Therefore, a learning control mechanism that acquires nonlinear relati
The musculoskeletal humanoid has many benefits that human beings have, but the modeling of its complex flexible body is difficult. Although we have developed an online acquisition method of the nonlinear relationship between joints and muscles, we could not completely match the actual robot and its…
In this paper, we propose walking balance control based on Caputurability. The proposed method consists of five strategies: (i) moving Zero Moment Point (ZMP) in the support polygon (ii) landing position modification (iii) landing timing modification (iv) angular momentum control (v) falling detecti…
In this paper, we propose an approach for online whole-body control of position-controlled humanoid robot with 3D multi-contact to cope with contact wrench constraints and joint overload. In our method, robots are controlled under contact wrench constraints with three features: 1) internal wrench co…
Robots need to adapt themselves to various surroundings in order to achieve robust object search and grasp in unknown environments. For this adaptation, robot motions should be implemented as combination of primitive motions which are based on sensor reaction. Among various sensing methods, non cont…
In this paper, we present the achievement of aerial grasping by shape adaptive transformation to the object shape, using a novel transformable aerial robot called HALO: Horizontal Plane Transformable Aerial Robot with Closed-loop Multilinks Structure. Aerial manipulation is an active research area a…
To enable robots to work on real home environments, they have to not only consider common knowledge in the global society, but also be aware of existing rules there. Since such “local rules” are not describable beforehand, robot agents must acquire them through their lives after deployment. To achie…
In this paper, we develop a bipedal robot control system that has an ability to perform instantaneous high power and flexibility to absorb an impulsive disturbance. We utilize a sensor-less whole body torque control method executed in a high responsive realtime distributed system. This system also i…
Currently, most of commercially available ankle foot prosthesis are passive, which don't exhibit appropriate biomechanics during walking and could not adapt to dynamic property of able-bodied walking. In this paper, we present a novel robotic ankle foot prosthesis with variable transmission series e…
In this letter, we introduce a novel transformable aerial robot called DRAGON, which is a dual-rotor-embedded multilink robot with the ability of multi-degree-of-freedom (DoF) aerial transformation. The new aerial robot can control the full pose in SE(3) regarding the center of gravity (CoG) of mult
Robotic picking of folded objects such as books is required for picking various objects. As a folded object is easily unfolded, it is difficult to carry it stably and place it in a desired pose due to its dangling part. For overcoming this difficulty, we propose a trial-and-error picking system usin…
We propose a method for a robot to manipulate an unknown door based on a single user instruction. The primary contributions of this paper are (i) to reduce the user instruction to a single click and (ii) to develop an efficient method to estimate an appropriate shape and manipulation model for a tar…
Human hands can not only grasp objects of various shape and size and manipulate them in hands but also exert such a large gripping force that they can support the body in the situations such as dangling a bar and climbing a ladder. On the other hand, it is difficult for most robot hands to manage bo…
In this paper, we introduce the achievement of the flight motion to pass through small opening by the multilinked and transformable aerial robot. Previous works about such motion are based on under-actuated multirotors, indicating that aggressive maneuvering is necessary condition. This involves two…
In this paper, we propose novel methods suitable for online real time whole body master-slave control with real life-sized humanoid robot. We conducted some dynamic whole body master-slave experiment with life-sized humanoid robot, and we achieved speedier and flexible master-slave operation compare…
We present a robotic system for picking a target from a pile of objects that is capable of finding and grasping the target object by removing obstacles in the appropriate order. The fundamental idea is to segment instances with both visible and occluded masks, which we call `instance occlusion segme…
Learning unknown objects in the environment is important for detection and manipulation tasks. Prior to learning the unknown objects the ground-truth labels have to be provided. The data annotation or labeling can be achieved in a number of ways but the most widely used method is still manual annota
Recently, self-supervised approach is common for robot grasping. Although this approach improves success rate, it requires a long time to execute a number of grasp trials, and single-arm grasping is only considered. However, robots can grasp more various objects with two arms, and dual-arm robots su…
The body structures of tendon-driven musculoskeletal humanoids are complex, and accurate modeling is difficult, because they are made by imitating the body structures of human beings. For this reason, we have not been able to move them accurately like ordinary humanoids driven by actuators in each a
Tendon-driven musculoskeletal humanoids have many benefits in terms of the flexible spine, multiple degrees of freedom, and variable stiffness. At the same time, because of its body complexity, there are problems in controllability. First, due to the large difference between the actual robot and its…
For a robot to manipulate an object, it has to understand the functions and the actions that can be subjected to the object. This set of information is known as affordance of the object. Affordances are generally defined by the geometrical structures and physical properties of the objects. In this p…
The sequential online tuning for controller gains is required for the continuous action of the riding into parallel two-wheeled scooter and the speed governing after riding by humanoid robot. The implemented controllers are different between the riding and the speed governing, and these tuning strat…
Comparing to IK (Inverse Kinematics) based motion control, joint-space motion control is more advantageous in terms of not being restricted by kinematics singularity problem. In this paper, we start with SIMBICON (Simple Biped Locomotion Control) based controller, a joint-space motion control method…
For robots to autonomously achieve manipulation tasks in various scenes, advanced operational skills such as tool use, learning from demonstration, and multi-robot/human-robot cooperation are necessary. In this research, we devise a method for robots to realize such operational skills in a unified m…
To enable robots to perform human-level tasks flexibly in varying conditions, we need a mechanism that allows them to exchange knowledge between themselves for crowd-sourcing the knowledge gap problem. One approach to achieve this is to equip a cloud application with a range of encyclopedic knowledg…
To enable robots to perform human-level tasks flexibly in varying conditions, we need a mechanism that allows them to exchange knowledge between themselves for crowd-sourcing the knowledge gap problem. One approach to achieve this is to equip a cloud application with a range of encyclopedic knowledg
Robots are designed to tackle specific problems or are designed as a multipurpose platform that achieves a concept. In this letter, we approach the hardware design problem from practice and evaluation through numerous competitions including the Darpa Robotics Challenge, the Amazon Picking Challenge,
In this paper, we introduce a novel robotic prosthetic knee as shown in Fig. 1 (named as SuKnee) with variable transmission mechanism that could vary transmission ratio while knee angle varies during ambulation activities. A slider crank mechanism is utilized to transform linear motion of series ela…
In this paper, we propose methods for walking on a steep slope using a rope by a humanoid robot. There are two difficulties for walking on a steep slope without a rope. First, range of motion of ankle joints get limited. Second, feet of a robot slip on a steep slope. For these problems, using a rope…
This paper presents a COM trajectory generation method for 3D walking and skating motion by nonlinear optimization. In our method, we solve the following problems: (1) dealing with both walking and skating motion in the same framework, (2) generating center of mass (COM) trajectory faster than execu…
Picking various objects in cluttered narrow space automatically is required for warehouse automation. In this space, multi-fingered robot hands have difficulty in grasping objects as objects are surrounded by obstacles. On the other hand, vacuum grippers have difficulty in grasping various objects s…
The body structure of an anatomically correct tendon-driven musculoskeletal humanoid is complex, and the difference between its geometric model and the actual robot is very large because expressing the complex routes of tendon wires in a geometric model is very difficult. If we move a tendon-driven
In this study, we propose a novel method to operate whole body of a humanoid robot, which also includes both feet, dynamically and safely with the master-slave approach. The conventional whole body master-slave approaches need static balancing assumption or a certain time length of planning after op…
For humanoid robots, unexpected collision can cause instability of robot balancing and damage to both robots and environment. This paper presents a reactive bipedal walking controller against swing foot collision for humanoid robots. This controller is composed of following three components: 1) Swin…
In this paper, we described a new developed life-size humanoid robot. A purpose of the developed robot is to realize continuous operation for a long time and to improve an action autonomously. we considered three aspects of robustness, mechanical robustness, functional robustness and robustness of a…
This paper explains low-latency joint torque feedback control based on torque estimation on each joint for gear-driven humanoid robots with harmonic drives. Force control of gear-driven robots has an advantage in its fully variable stiffness in comparison with elastic robots. However, feedback laten…
Whole-body manipulation is necessary for a humanoid robot to achieve tasks such as carrying large objects. One difficulty for achieving a whole-body manipulation is that the robot needs to select the appropriate operation from a list of candidates, such as lifting, pushing, and tilting. The appropri…
Human can not only support their body during standing or walking, but also support them by hand, so that they can dangle a bar and others. But most humanoid robots support their body only in the foot and they use their hand just to manipulate objects because their hands are too weak to support their…
The human forearm is composed of two long, thin bones called the radius and the ulna, and rotates using two axle joints. We aimed to develop a forearm based on the body proportion, weight ratio, muscle arrangement, and joint performance of the human body in order to bring out its benefits. For this,…
In this paper, we show the achievement of a transformable aerial robot with internal communication system for multiple objects transportation. As it is not easy to make the flight endurance of an aerial robot longer, we study the problem to transport multiple objects at the same time to improve the…
This paper shows a method for achieving multi-contact motion for a humanoid robot on a movable object, such as climbing of a stepladder. Recent research has developed methods for achieving multi-contact motion that considers various constraints, such as joint limits, torques, balance constraints, re…
Probabilistic 3D map has been applied to object segmentation with multiple camera viewpoints, however, conventional methods lack of real-time efficiency and functionality of multilabel object mapping. In this paper, we propose a method to generate three-dimensional map with multilabel occupancy in r…
In recent years, applications of visual tracking algorithms has seen a substantial growth with deployments in intelligent robots such as drones for human tracking. The algorithms for such tasks has to be efficient in terms of computational cost while been robust, accurate and fast. Object tracking a…
Recent studies have explored humanoid robots in contact with the environment in various ways. However, many of them assumed static rather than sliding contacts. Studies on humanoid shuffle motion planning have realized sliding motions, such as turning, but relied on quasi-static balance control. In
In this paper, we introduce the achievement of the aerial manipulation by using the whole body of a transformable aerial robot, instead of attaching an additional manipulator. The aerial robot in our work is composed by two-dimensional multilinks which enable a stable aerial transformation and can b…
To achieve tasks in unknown environments with high reliability, highly accurate localization during task execution is necessary for humanoid robots. In this paper, we discuss a localization system which can be applied to a humanoid robot when executing tasks in the real world. During such tasks, hum…
To enable robotic sensing for tasks with requirements on weight, size, and cost, we develop an ultra-tiny line laser range sensor based on the Time-of-Flight (TOF) principle. With delicate circuit design and optical attachments, we create a sensor as small as 35[mm] × 27[mm] × 30[mm] and as light as…
In this paper, we present a design and development an autonomous tomato harvesting robot. We developed a harvesting robot with stereo camera which can measure depth in short range and direct sunlight and plucking gripper using the infinity rotational joint. We also evaluate the developed robot throu…
We propose a human mimetic foot structure for musculoskeletal humanoids. We designed the foot structure by inspiring from human foot abilities of the multi-bone connected structure for flexibility and the distributed force sensor system. The foot has multi-DOFs structure including toe DOF that is co…
Groping behavior based on contact sensors is necessary for manipulation in an unknown environment. For those situations, it is effective for a robot to accumulate contact information as an environment map, and to plan the motions for executing the safe trial motion. We first propose a method of upda
In this paper, we propose a real-time control method for skating motion of humanoid robots. There are three problems for skating motion: (1) keeping dynamic balance, (2) adequately controlling foot force to suppress slipping at the foot, (3) controlling full-body motion in real-time. For solving the…
For generating motions of robots, global search in configuration space is time consuming although it is sometimes indispensable (e.g. collision avoidance in complex environment). Our idea is to use global sampling algorithm not in the state space but in the task nullspace, which is the redundant deg…
In this paper we propose a novel method to utilize the skeletal structure not only for supporting force but for releasing heat by latent heat.
Humanoid robot has the potential to manipulate wide range of tools in daily life. Arms and legs of humanoid robot contribute this ability. Above all, manipulation tasks for vehicles which are the same size as a life-sized humanoid or larger size than it require the operational motion by both arms an…
In this paper, we develop a waterproof suit for humanoid robots and propose an underwater walking control method. Although very few life-sized humanoid robots are completely waterproof, we can easily make these humanoid robots watertight by putting a waterproof suit on them. In water, humanoid robot…
We propose a sensor-driver integrated muscle module by integrating necessarily components for tendon-driven robot which is likely to complicate. The module has abilities of high-tension measurability and flexible tension control. In order to achieve flexible tension control, we developed the new ten…
To enable robots to learn handover orientations from observing natural handovers, we conduct a user study to measure and compare natural handover orientations with giver-centered and receiver-centered handover orientations for twenty common objects. We use a distance minimization approach to compute…
For generating whole-body behavior involving contacts with environments such as climbing ladder behavior or walking on terrain behavior, “contact-before-motion” approach was used in some previous researches. By separating contact search process and motion search process, whole-body behavior generati…
The main goal of this paper is to design and evaluate a spine structure which withstands various motions. The structure around the neck has a prevailing importance since it is involved in various motions of the upper half of the body. The new design method we introduce essentially shows how to desig…
We have developed a robot with a new control mechanism in order to collect information on flying robots in multiple fields. We aimed for a function that could rotate the tilt angle continuously and without limit and a function for flying maintaining any desired tilt angle with a structure that could…
We present a vision cognition framework for tomato harvesting humanoid robot based on geometrical and physical reasoning. Inspired from the natural human harvesting behaviour, our goal is to build a humanoid robot to pick tomatoes autonomously or with minimal human efforts. The proposed vision appro…
This paper presents a novel control method to stabilize the whole-body motion of humanoid robots when climbing vertical ladders and transitioning between ladders and catwalks. In such environments, the body of the robot tends to incline and rotate because of the slippery surfaces. The inclination an…
In situations where humanoid robots with constrained posture walk through a narrow space (e.g. manufacturing plants and kitchens), shuffling motions that are stepless and possess wide foot supporting area are effective. One of the difficulties of humanoid's shuffle translations is the load distribut…
Whole-body holding manipulation is effective for carrying the handleless large object. In order to keep the object stability, the dexterous transition motion is necessary. From geometric and physical conditions of object manipulation, we propose the general method of generating the transition graph,…
Humanoid robot is able to execute various behavior to manipulate objects because of high degree-of-freedom around the whole-body. Although hands contact with objects and exert force in ordinary pushing motion by robot, pushing motion contacting with the object at various regions of whole-body has po…