The poppy humanoid robot: Leg design for biped locomotion

Abstract

Abstract-We introduce a novel humanoid robotic platform designed to jointly address three central goals of humanoid robotics: 1) study the role of morphology in biped locomotion; 2) study full-body compliant physical human-robot interaction; 3) be robust while easy and fast to duplicate to facilitate experimentation. The taken approach relies on functional modeling of certain aspects of human morphology, optimizing materials and geometry, as well as on the use of 3D printing techniques. In this article, we focus on the presentation of the design of specific morphological parts related to biped locomotion: the hip, the thigh, the limb mesh and the knee. We present initial experiments showing properties of the robot when walking with the physical guidance of a human.

Poppy humanoid platform: Experimental evaluation of the role of a bio-inspired thigh shape

“…We have presented the morphological properties of a new humanoid robot platform named Poppy [9]. In this paper, we focus on the shape of the Poppy thigh and its effect on the robot dynamic.…”

“…Then we will focus on the thigh shape and explain its role with a theoretical model. While the general platform has been described in [9], we focus here on the description of the theoretical model of the thigh shape and we introduce an experimental evaluation of its role in biped locomotion.…”

“…Thus the robot remains almost stationary for 600 ms (400ms in the case of straight thigh). The typical walking gait of Poppy is done over a period of one second so the mono-pedal stance phase last around 420 ms [9]. Considering that the robot remains stationary during more time than the single stance phase, we can imagine that the lateral balance control will be reduced during the walking gait.…”

“…1a) presented with details in [9]. This humanoid robot was designed to easily and quickly conduct scientific experiments on sensorimotor learning, exploring morphology properties, and human-robot interaction.…”

“…This is ensured by a combination of an anthropomorphic morphology, morphological computation, articulated spine and lightweight/soft material. Poppy's morphological properties are theoretically described in [9]. In this paper we will focus on its bioinspired thigh shape, bended by an angle of 6 o .…”