Exploring humanoid robots locomotion capabilities in virtual disaster response scenarios

Abstract

We study the feasibility of having various humanoid robots undertake some tasks from those challenged by the DARPA's call on disaster operations. Hence, we focus on locomotion tasks that apparently require human-like motor skills to be achieved. We use virtual scenes under the fully-3D-modeled-environment assumption. The robot autonomously plans and executes the motion with a high-level goal specification, such as reaching a global position or a particular contact state. We assess the feasibility according not only to the robot kinematics, but also to whole-body dynamics, nondesired collision avoidance, friction limits, and actuation limits. The results -the controlled motions-are demonstrated in the accompanying video.

Model preview control in multi-contact motion-application to a humanoid robot

“…Each stance is composed of a set of contacts and a statically-stable configuration of the robot (including the free-flyer). A QP task-based controller, described in [15], [16] accounts for various types of constraints and tasks (such as CoM tracking) to achieve multi-contact stance-to-stance transitions. This position command is then sent to the robot's PD control loop.…”

“…Finally the remaining changes are as follows: First, we enhanced the initial Finite State Machine of [15] to account for additional steps that are: (i) reach a target posture before lifting an object, (ii) trigger on/off the necessary modifications to bilaterally switch between robot and robot+object (iii) bridge on/off to the robot multi-contact FSM.…”

Point-cloud multi-contact planning for humanoids: Preliminary results

“…A typical experiment with a HRP-2 robot achieving such an acyclic motion is presented in [1], and the planner is thoroughly described in [2]. Extensions of this multi-contact planner to multi-agent robots and objects gathering locomotion and manipulation are presented in [3], and preliminary validations with some DARPA challenge scenarios, such as climbing a ladder, ingress/egress a utility car or crossing through a relatively constrained pathway are presented in [4]. In [2] and [3], we describe works in multi-contact that are achieved by other colleagues in robotics.…”

Vertical ladder climbing by the HRP-2 humanoid robot

“…Compared to [11], we brought two changes: (i) more refined contact models, and (ii) the possibility to compute postures at once (i.e. at a glance) to generate optimal postures that minimizes a given cost over the entire path.…”

“…The underpinning of our work is described in [11]. In brief, a multi-contact planner (MCP) uses the HRP-2, ladder and environment models (assumed known) to generate offline a sequence of postures in contact to climb the ladder.…”