Playing it safe

Zinn, Michael; Khatib, Oussama; Roth, Bernard; Salisbury, J. Kenneth

doi:10.1109/mra.2004.1310938

Cited by 327 publications

(113 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Numerous designs for VSAs have been proposed, with the motivation of (i) improving safety of robots and humans (by providing an intrinsic compliance) [26], (ii) adding additional redundancy in the control (allowing robots to be stiff and accurate or compliant to the environment according to task demands) [12], and (iii) improving the energy efficiency and dynamic range of existing actuators (e.g., by exploiting the energy storage capabilities of such devices) [5].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploiting Variable Stiffness in Explosive Movement Tasks

Braun¹,

Howard²,

Vijayakumar³

2011

Robotics: Science and Systems VII

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Abstract-It is widely recognised that compliant actuation is advantageous to robot control once high-performance, explosive tasks, such as throwing, hitting or jumping are considered. However, the benefit of intrinsic compliance comes with high control complexity. Specifically, coordinating the motion of the system through a compliant actuator and finding a task-specific impedance profile that leads to better performance is non-trivial. Here, we utilise optimal control to devise time-varying torque and stiffness profiles for highly dynamic movements in compliantly actuated robots. The proposed methodology is applied to a ballthrowing task where we demonstrate that: (i) the method is able to tailor impedance strategies to specific task objectives and system dynamics, (ii) the ability to vary stiffness leads to better performance in this class of movements, (iii) in systems with variable physical compliance, our methodology is able to exploit the energy storage capabilities of the actuators. We illustrate these in several numerical simulations, and in hardware experiments on a device with variable physical stiffness.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploiting Variable Stiffness in Explosive Movement Tasks

Braun¹,

Howard²,

Vijayakumar³

2011

Robotics: Science and Systems VII

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“…Robust and reliable systems for navigation [6], obstacle avoidance [7], and localization [8] have been successfully integrated into several kinds of robotic platforms [9]. A number of methods have been developed to allow robots to navigate safely around people in specific, typically nongeneralizable tasks [10].…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Continuous real time POMCP to find-and-follow people by a humanoid service robot

Goldhoorn

Garrell

Alquézar

et al. 2014

2014 IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots

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Abstract-This study describes and evaluates two new methods for finding and following people in urban settings using a humanoid service robot: the Continuous Real-time POMCP method, and its improved extension called Adaptive Highest Belief Continuous Real-time POMCP follower. They are able to run in real-time, in large continuous environments. These methods make use of the online search algorithm Partially Observable Monte-Carlo Planning (POMCP), which in contrast to other previous approaches, can plan under uncertainty on large state spaces. We compare our new methods with a heuristic person follower and demonstrate that they obtain better results by testing them extensively in both simulated and real-life experiments. More than two hours, over 3 km, of autonomous navigation during real-life experiments have been done with a mobile humanoid robot in urban environments.

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“…This approach does not only have advantages. The thickness of the covering material required for attaining a good level of safety could be relatively large as mentioned in Zinn, Khatib, Roth & Salisbury (2004b). This extra material could significantly increased the weight of the robot with a negative impact on its dynamics performance .…”

Section: Robot Soft Coveringmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…At an even more fundamental level, the way they are currently designed presents significant risks in the proximity of humans. Many studies have investigated this last aspect to demonstrate the potential danger of a robot Zinn, Khatib, Roth & Salisbury (2004a) and to understand and provide metrics to characterize to the level of this threat Haddadin, AlbuSchaffer, Frommberger & Hirzinger (2008) ;; Yamada et al (1997). The next step for robot designers should focus on increasing human safety to an acceptable level according to the conclusion of these studies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%