The DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals: Results and Perspectives

Krotkov, Eric; Hackett, Douglas; Jackel, L. D.; Perschbacher, Michael; Pippine, James; Strauss, Jesse; Pratt, Gill A.; Orlowski, Christopher

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-74666-1_1

Cited by 54 publications

(47 citation statements)

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“…The chosen evaluation tasks are typical for mobile manipulation in the context of construction, maintenance, and exploration in planetary and man-made environments. Some of the designed tasks were inspired by the DARPA robotics challenge (Krotkov et al, 2017). Each task was attempted at least once, with the final count of attempts depending on task execution time and the assessed task difficulty.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Remote mobile manipulation with the centauro robot: Full‐body telepresence and autonomous operator assistance

Klamt

Schwarz

Lenz

et al. 2019

Journal of Field Robotics

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Solving mobile manipulation tasks in inaccessible and dangerous environments is an important application of robots to support humans. Example domains are construction and maintenance of manned and unmanned stations on the moon and other planets. Suitable platforms require flexible and robust hardware, a locomotion approach that allows for navigating a wide variety of terrains, dexterous manipulation capabilities, and respective user interfaces. We present the CENTAURO system which has been designed for these requirements and consists of the Centauro robot and a set of advanced operator interfaces with complementary strength enabling the system to solve a wide range of realistic mobile manipulation tasks. The robot possesses a centaur-like body plan and is driven by torquecontrolled compliant actuators. Four articulated legs ending in steerable wheels allow for omnidirectional driving as well as for making steps. An anthropomorphic upper body with two arms ending in five-finger hands enables human-like manipulation. The robot perceives its environment through a suite of multimodal sensors. The resulting platform complexity goes beyond the complexity of most known systems which puts the focus on a suitable operator interface. An operator can control the robot through a telepresence suit, which allows for flexibly solving a large variety of mobile manipulation tasks. Locomotion and manipulation functionalities on different levels of autonomy support the operation. The proposed user interfaces enable solving a wide variety of tasks without previous task-specific training. The integrated system is evaluated in numerous teleoperated experiments that are described along with lessons learned. 3D laser scanner Cameras RGB-D sensor 7 DoF arm 9 DoF dexterous hand 1 DoF soft hand 5 DoF leg 360°steerable wheel Base with CPUs, router and battery Figure 1: The Centauro robot. IntroductionCapable mobile manipulation robots are desperately needed in environments which are inaccessible or dangerous for humans. Missions include construction and maintenance of manned and unmanned stations, as well as exploration of unknown environments on the moon and other planets. Furthermore, such systems can be employed in search and rescue missions on earth. It applies to all these missions that human deployment is impossible or dangerous, and depends on extensive logistical and financial effort.To address the wide range of possible tasks, a suitable platform needs to provide a wide range of capabilities. Regarding locomotion, exemplary tasks are to overcome a variety of obstacles which can occur on planetary surfaces and in man-made environments, e.g., in space stations. Regarding manipulation, tasks may be to use power tools, to physically connect and disconnect objects such as electrical plugs, or to scan surfaces, e.g., for radiation. Since maintenance is not possible during missions, a high hardware and software reliability is necessary. Furthermore, suitable operator interfaces are key to enable the control of a system that must solve suc...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Remote mobile manipulation with the centauro robot: Full‐body telepresence and autonomous operator assistance

Klamt

Schwarz

Lenz

et al. 2019

Journal of Field Robotics

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“…A LTHOUGH humanoid robots have been promoted for working in such real environments as hazardous situations instead of humans, they remain difficult to generate human-like behaviors, especially in terms of versatility and agility [1].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Full-Body Optimal Control Toward Versatile and Agile Behaviors in a Humanoid Robot

Ishihara

Itoh

Morimoto

2020

IEEE Robot. Autom. Lett.

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In this letter, we develop an optimal control framework that takes the full-body dynamics of a humanoid robot into account. Employing full-body dynamics has been explored in, especially, an online optimal control approach known as model predictive control (MPC). However, whole-body motions cannot be updated in a short period of time due to MPC's large computational burden. Thus, MPC has generally been evaluated with a physical humanoid robot in a limited range of tasks where high-speed motion executions are unnecessary. To cope with this problem, our multi-timescale control framework drives whole-body motions with a computationally efficient hierarchical MPC. Meanwhile, a biologically inspired controller maintains the robot's posture for a very short control period. We evaluated our framework in skating tasks with simulated and real lower-body humanoids that have rollers on the feet. Our simulated robot generated various agile motions such as jumping over a bump and flipping down from a cliff in real time. Our real lower-body humanoid also successfully generated a movement down a slope.

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“…To have sufficient control but not overburden the operator during task execution, supervisory control over complete autonomy or teleoperation is preferred [4]. Concretely, the presented approach has similarities to [5], [6], that are used in search, rescue, and disaster response scenarios [7], [8]. However, other novel tasks specific to IED response are considered, namely crossing a narrow gap, retrieving a suspected IED from a vehicle, depositing the IED in a TCV tray, and operating the TCV.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deploying the NASA Valkyrie Humanoid for IED Response: An Initial Approach and Evaluation Summary

Jorgensen¹,

Lee

Paterson

et al. 2019

2019 IEEE-RAS 19th International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids)

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As part of a feasibility study, this paper shows the NASA Valkyrie humanoid robot performing an endto-end improvised explosive device (IED) response task. To demonstrate and evaluate robot capabilities, sub-tasks highlight different locomotion, manipulation, and perception requirements: traversing uneven terrain, passing through a narrow passageway, opening a car door, retrieving a suspected IED, and securing the IED in a total containment vessel (TCV). For each sub-task, a description of the technical approach and the hidden challenges that were overcome during development are presented. The discussion of results, which explicitly includes existing limitations, is aimed at motivating continued research and development to enable practical deployment of humanoid robots for IED response. For instance, the data shows that operator pauses contribute to 50% of the total completion time, which implies that further work is needed on user interfaces for increasing task completion efficiency. * The authors are with the 1 NASA Johnson Space Center, 2 TRACLabs, the 3 Institute for Human Machine and Cognition (IHMC), 4 Jacobs Technology, 5 METECS, 6 CACI, and 7 The University of Texas at Austin.

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The DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals: Results and Perspectives

Cited by 54 publications

References 0 publications

Remote mobile manipulation with the centauro robot: Full‐body telepresence and autonomous operator assistance

Remote mobile manipulation with the centauro robot: Full‐body telepresence and autonomous operator assistance

Full-Body Optimal Control Toward Versatile and Agile Behaviors in a Humanoid Robot

Deploying the NASA Valkyrie Humanoid for IED Response: An Initial Approach and Evaluation Summary

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