Team SNU's Control Strategies for Enhancing a Robot's Capability: Lessons from the 2015 DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals

Abstract

This paper presents the technical approaches used and experimental results obtained by Team SNU (Seoul National University) at the 2015 DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) Finals. Team SNU is one of the newly qualified teams, unlike 12 teams who previously participated in the December 2013 DRC Trials. The hardware platform THORMANG, which we used, has been developed by ROBOTIS. THORMANG is one of the smallest robots at the DRC Finals. Based on this platform, we focused on developing software architecture and controllers in order to perform complex tasks in disaster response situations and modifying hardware modules to maximize manipulability. Ensuring stability and modularization are two main keywords in the technical approaches of the architecture. We designed our interface and controllers to achieve a higher robustness level against disaster situations. Moreover, we concentrated on developing our software architecture by integrating a number of modules to eliminate software system complexity and programming errors. With these efforts on the hardware and software, we successfully finished the competition without falling, and we ranked 12th out of 23 teams. This paper is concluded with a number of lessons learned by analyzing the 2015 DRC Finals.

Design of JET Humanoid Robot with Compliant Modular Actuators for Industrial and Service Applications

“…First, THORMANG is modular and can, therefore, be easily modified according to user aims. For example, although four teams used the THORMANG platform at the DRC Finals (TEAM SNU, TEAM THOR, TEAM, Hector, and TEAM Robotis), the robot shapes, sizes, and weights varied, as shown in Figure 2 [11]. Second, THORMANG employs Dynamixel Pro, which is an actuator module developed as a commercial product by ROBOTIS.…”

“…In the DRC Finals, all THORMANG-based robots failed the egress task, as detailed in Table 1, because the robot could not reach the floor while sitting in the vehicle. Further, the stair task, which required the robot to climb a staircase, was one of the most difficult tasks for the THORMANG-based designs because of their short legs and narrow workspace [11]. To statically climb the stairs, the knees required sufficient bending for lateral movement.…”

“…Using a PCIe-based communication interface, JET can be controlled with a 200 Hz command rate. In contrast, the THORMANG command rate is 100 Hz [11]. To supply power to the robot, we designed a power system including regulators and a battery.…”

“…In this study, the JET humanoid platform shown in Figure 1 is introduced to implement the three features listed above. JET was developed on the basis of THORMANG, which was developed by ROBOTIS and was modified by TEAM SNU for the DRC Finals [11]. Through the new design proposed herein, JET overcomes the THORMANG platform limitations while conserving its advantages.…”

Autonomous car driving by a humanoid robot

“…Most of the existing approaches have achieved this goal by relying on teleoperation . Supervisory steering and gas commands are sent to the robot to drive the car in Karumanchi et al …”