41 accepted papers
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…
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…
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…
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…
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 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
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 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
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…
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
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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 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…
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…
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…
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,…
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
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…