Whole body motion control of humanoid robots using bilateral control

Abstract

This paper deals with the whole body motion control problem of humanoid robots by using automatic and bilateral control methods. Advanced motion controllers are proposed so that human daily life activities, such as walking on an uneven terrain and contacting an unknown object, can be performed. It is shown that the uncertainty of environmental impedance variation is one of the main challenging issues in the design of the automatic control systems, i.e. a humanoid robot may easily lose its stability when it contacts an unstructured environment. A novel bilateral control method is proposed for humanoid robots so as to overcome the environmental uncertainty problem. It is shown that more dexterous and versatile tasks can be easily performed by transforming the skills of humans to humanoid robots in the proposed bilateral control system. A disturbance observer is used not only to achieve the robustness of the motion control system but also to perform sensorless contact motion control tasks. The performance of sensorless contact force estimation is significantly improved by deriving the exact dynamic model of humanoid robots. A floating point base exact dynamic model is derived by using the extended Newton-Euler algorithm. A new robot simulator is designed by using the proposed dynamic model and the Virtual Reality toolbox of MATLAB. Simulation results are given to show the validity of the proposals.

Humanoid Prototype Development Through 3D Printing for New Technologies

“…One of the significant challenges of the project was to develop human-like walking and sturdiness when in the presence of disturbances, such as variations' terrain [2]. The main problems associated with the analysis and control of bipedal robots are changes due to the impact of the leg on the ground.…”

Desenvolvimento de um protótipo humanoide por meio de impressões 3D para desenvolvimento de novas tecnologias/Developing a humanoid prototype through 3D printing for developing new technologies

“…Um dos grandes desafios do projeto é desenvolver um caminhar semelhante ao humano e robustez quando na presença de distúrbios, tais como variações do terreno (i.e. [2]). Os problemas principais associados com a análise e o controle de robôs bípedes são as mudanças devido principalmente ao impacto da perna com o solo.…”

A Unified Robust Motion Controller Synthesis for Compliant Robots Driven by Series Elastic Actuators

“…Compared to traditional industrial robots that can repeat high-precision position control tasks in a strictly restricted and constructed workspace at factories, next generation robots, such as cobots, exoskeletons, and humanoids, are expected to perform physical interaction control tasks alongside human beings in an open environment [1][2][3][4][5]. When it comes to interacting with an unknown and dynamic environment, safety and highperformance force control become essential requirements for a robotic system [1,5].…”