Designing an algorithm for bioloid humanoid navigating in its indoor environment

Gait analyses are the preliminary requirements to establish a navigation system of a humanoid robot. Designing a suitable indoor environment and its mapping are also important for the android localization, selection of a goal to achieve it and to perform the assigned tasks in its surroundings. This paper delineates the various gaits like walking, turning, obstacle overcoming and step up-down stairs for a humanoid system. The writing also explicates the design of the indoor test environment with the stationary obstacles placed on the navigation routes. The development of an efficient algorithm is also excogitated based on the various analyses of gaits and the predefined map of the test environment. As the navigation map is predetermined, the designed algorithm animates the humanoid to navigate by selecting an optimal route, depending on some external commands, to reach at the goal position. Finally the performance of the system is analysed based on the elapsed time of the navigation action with the validation of optimal navigation strategy where the designed algorithm demonstrates the robustness of its implementation and execution

Planification de pas pour robots humanoïdes : approches discrètes et continues

Dans cette thèse nous nous intéressons à deux types d'approches pour la planification de pas pour robots humanoïdes : d'une part les approches discrètes où le robot n'a qu'un nombre fini de pas possibles, et d'autre part les approches où le robot se base sur des zones de faisabilité continues. Nous étudions ces problèmes à la fois du point de vue théorique et pratique. En particulier nous décrivons deux méthodes originales, cohérentes et efficaces pour la planification de pas, l'une dans le cas discret (chapitre 5) et l'autre dans le cas continu (chapitre 6). Nous validons ces méthodes en simulation ainsi qu'avec plusieurs expériences sur le robot HRP-2. ABSTRACT : In this thesis we investigate two types of approaches for footstep planning for humanoid robots: on one hand the discrete approaches where the robot has only a finite set of possible steps, and on the other hand the approaches where the robot uses continuous feasibility regions. We study these problems both on a theoretical and practical level. In particular, we describe two original, coherent and efficient methods for footstep planning, one in the discrete case (chapter 5), and one in the continuous case (chapter 6). We validate these methods in simulation and with several experiments on the robot HRP-2

Déplacement d'un mannequin virtuel dans un environnement encombré : simulation de mouvement en intégrant les contraintes d'équilibre

This thesis was carried out in collaboration and co-funding of LSI of CEA/LIST and LBMC of IFSTTAR. The aim of the thesis was to study and develop a method for simulating the movement of a virtual manikin (VM) in a cluttered environment based on a priori knowledge. This thesis presents firstly motion capture (MoCap) experiments. The recorded data were analyzed to define some principles on human motion in cluttered environments. We then propose a general balance criterion and stability margin, based on a simplified model of VM. Then, we present a hierarchical framework that can generate and simulate dynamic movements of VM in a cluttered environment in three stages: a global trajectory of the center of mass (CoM) is generated at the global level to ensure balance in the VM's motion; then the trajectories of end-effectors (EE, ie feet, hands) and postures are generated locally under constraints of kinematics and collision avoidance; finally at the execution level, trajectories (CoM and EEs) and postures are used as references in a dynamic controller associated with VM so that the VM realizes the motion in a simulation. This framework is implemented in a car-ingress scenario in order to evaluate its performance and to suggest future improvementsCette thèse a été réalisée en collaboration et cofinancement impliquant le LSI du CEA/LIST et le LBMC de l'IFSTTAR. L'objectif de thèse était d'étudier et de développer une méthode pour simuler les mouvements d'un mannequin virtuel (MV) dans un environnement encombré en s'appuyant sur des connaissances a priori. L'étude présente, dans un premier temps, des expériences de capture de mouvement (MoCap). Les données enregistrées ont été analysées afin de définir quelques principes sur les mouvements humains dans des environnements encombrés. Nous proposons ensuite un critère général d'équilibre et une marge de stabilité, sur la base d'un modèle simplifié du MV. Puis, nous présentons un framework hiérarchique pouvant générer et simuler des mouvements dynamiques du MV dans un environnement encombré en trois étapes : une trajectoire globale du centre de masse (CoM) est générée au niveau global afin d'assurer l'équilibre du MV durant son mouvement; puis au niveau local, les trajectoires des organes terminaux (OT, i.e. pieds, mains) et les postures sont générées localement sous des contraintes cinématiques et d'évitement de collisions; enfin au niveau de l'exécution, les trajectoires (CoM et OTs) et les postures sont utilisées comme références dans un contrôleur dynamique associé au MV. Enfin, ce framework est mis en œuvre dans un scenario d'entrée dans un véhicule pour évaluer ses performances et proposer des améliorations future

Humanoid Robots

For many years, the human being has been trying, in all ways, to recreate the complex mechanisms that form the human body. Such task is extremely complicated and the results are not totally satisfactory. However, with increasing technological advances based on theoretical and experimental researches, man gets, in a way, to copy or to imitate some systems of the human body. These researches not only intended to create humanoid robots, great part of them constituting autonomous systems, but also, in some way, to offer a higher knowledge of the systems that form the human body, objectifying possible applications in the technology of rehabilitation of human beings, gathering in a whole studies related not only to Robotics, but also to Biomechanics, Biomimmetics, Cybernetics, among other areas. This book presents a series of researches inspired by this ideal, carried through by various researchers worldwide, looking for to analyze and to discuss diverse subjects related to humanoid robots. The presented contributions explore aspects about robotic hands, learning, language, vision and locomotion

Locomotion and balance control of humanoid robots with dynamic and kinematic constraints

Building a robot capable of servicing and assisting people is one of the ultimate goals in humanoid robotics. To realize this goal, a humanoid robot first needs to be able to perform some fundamental locomotion tasks, such as balancing and walking. However, simply performing such basic tasks in static, open environments is insufficient for a robot to be useful. A humanoid robot should also possess the ability to make use of the object in the environment to generate dynamic motions and improve its mobility. Also, since humanoid robots are expected to work and live closely with humans, having human-like motions is important for them to be human-friendly. This dissertation addresses my work on endowing humanoid robots with the ability to handle dynamic and kinematic constraints while performing the basic tasks in order to achieve more complex locomotion tasks. First, as a representative case of handling dynamic constraints, a biped humanoid robot is required to balance and walk on a cylinder that rolls freely on the ground. This task is difficult even for humans. I introduce a control method for a humanoid robot to execute this challenging task. In order for the robot to be able to actively control cylinder's motion, the dynamics of the cylinder has been taken into account together with the dynamics of the robot in deriving the control method. Its effectiveness has been verified by full-body dynamics simulation and hardware experiments on the Sarcos humanoid robot. Second, as an example of tasks with kinematic constraints, I present a method for real-time control of humanoid robots to track human motions while maintaining balance. It consists of a standard proportional-derivative tracking controller that computes the desired acceleration to track the given reference motion and an optimizer that computes the optimal joint torques and contact forces to realize the desired acceleration, considering the full-body dynamics of the robot and strict constraints on contact forces. By taking advantage of the property that the joint torques do not contribute to the six degrees of freedom of the floating base, I decouple the computation of joint torques and contact forces such that the optimization problem with strict contact force constraints can be solved in real time. In full-body simulation, a humanoid robot is able to imitate various human motions by using this method. Through this work, I demonstrate that considering dynamic and kinematic constraints in the environment in the design of controllers enables humanoid robots to achieve more complex locomotion tasks, such as manipulating a dynamic object or tracking given reference motions, while maintaining balance.Doctor of Philosoph

Stable locomotion of humanoid robots based on mass concentrated model

El estudio de la locomoción de robots humanoides es actualmente un área muy activa, en el campo de la robótica. Partiendo del principio que el hombre esta construyendo robots para trabajar juntos cooperando en ambientes humanos. La estabilidad durante la caminata es un factor crítico que prevee la caída del robot, la cual puede causar deterioros al mismo y a las personas en su entorno. De esta manera, el presente trabajo pretende resolver una parte del problema de la locomoción bípeda, esto es los métodos empleados para “La generación del paso” (“Gait generation”) y asi obtener la caminata estable. Para obtener una marcha estable se utilizan modelos de masa concentrada. De esta manera el modelo del “pendulo invertido simple” y el modelo del “carro sobre la mesa” se han utilizado para conseguir la marcha estable de robots humanoides. En el modelo del pendulo invertido, la masa el pendulo conduce el movimiento del centro de gravedad (CDG) del robot humanoide durante la marcha. Se detallara que el CDG se mueve como una bola libre sobre un plano bajo las leyes del pendulo en el campo de gravedad. Mientras que en el modelo del “carro sobre la mesa”, el carro conduce el movimiento del CDG durante la marcha. En este caso, el movimiento del carro es tratado como un sistema servocontrolado, y el movimiento del CDG es obtenido con los actuales y futuros estados de referencia del Zero Moment Point (ZMP). El método para generar el paso propuesto esta compuesto de varias capas como son Movimiento global, movimiento local, generación de patrones de movimiento, cinemática inversa y dinámica inversa y finalmente una corrección off-line. Donde la entrada en este método es la meta global (es decir la configuración final del robot, en el entorno de marcha) y las salidas son los patrones de movimiento de las articulaciones junto con el patrón de referencia del ZMP. Por otro lado, se ha propuesto el método para generar el “Paso acíclico”. Este método abarca el movimiento del paso dinámico incluyendo todo el cuerpo del robot humanoide, desde desde cuaquier postura genérica estáticamente estable hasta otra; donde las entradas son los estados inicial y final del robot (esto es los ángulos iniciales y finales de las articulaciones) y las salidas son las trayectorias de referencia de cada articulación y del ZMP. Se han obtenido resultados satisfactorios en las simulaciones y en el robot humanoide real Rh-1 desarrollado en el Robotics lab de la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. De igual manera el movimiento innovador llamado “Paso acíclico” se ha implemenado exitosamente en el robot humanoide HRP-2 (desarrollado por el AIST e Industrias Kawada Inc., Japon). Finalmente los resultados, contribuciones y trabajos futuros se expondran y discutirán. _______________________________________________The study of humanoid robot locomotion is currently a very active area in robotics, since humans build robots to work their environments in common cooperation and in harmony. Stability during walking motion is a critical fact in preventing the robot from falling down and causing the human or itself damages. This work tries to solve a part of the locomotion problem, which is, the “Gait Generation” methods used to obtain stable walking. Mass concentrated models are used to obtain stable walking motion. Thus the inverted pendulum model and the cart-table model are used to obtain stable walking motion in humanoid robots. In the inverted pendulum model, the mass of the pendulum drives the center of gravity (COG) motion of the humanoid robot while it is walking. It will be detailed that the COG moves like a free ball on a plane under the laws of the pendulum in the field of gravity. While in the cart-table model, the cart drives the COG motion during walking motion. In this case, the cart motion is treated as a servo control system, obtaining its motion from future reference states of the ZMP. The gait generation method proposed has many layers like Global motion, local motion, motion patterns generation, inverse kinematics and inverse dynamics and finally off-line correction. When the input in the gait generation method is the global goal (that is the final configuration of the robot in walking environment), and the output is the joint patterns and ZMP reference patterns. Otherwise, the “Acyclic gait” method is proposed. This method deals with the whole body humanoid robot dynamic step motion from any generic posture to another one when the input is the initial and goal robot states (that is the initial and goal joint angles) and the output is the joint and ZMP reference patterns. Successful simulation and actual results have been obtained with the Rh- 1 humanoid robot developed in the Robotics lab (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain) and the innovative motion called “Acyclic gait” implemented in the HRP-2 humanoid robot platform (developed by the AIST and Kawada Industries Inc., Japan). Furthermore, the results, contributions and future works will be discussed

Climbing and Walking Robots

Nowadays robotics is one of the most dynamic fields of scientific researches. The shift of robotics researches from manufacturing to services applications is clear. During the last decades interest in studying climbing and walking robots has been increased. This increasing interest has been in many areas that most important ones of them are: mechanics, electronics, medical engineering, cybernetics, controls, and computers. Today’s climbing and walking robots are a combination of manipulative, perceptive, communicative, and cognitive abilities and they are capable of performing many tasks in industrial and non- industrial environments. Surveillance, planetary exploration, emergence rescue operations, reconnaissance, petrochemical applications, construction, entertainment, personal services, intervention in severe environments, transportation, medical and etc are some applications from a very diverse application fields of climbing and walking robots. By great progress in this area of robotics it is anticipated that next generation climbing and walking robots will enhance lives and will change the way the human works, thinks and makes decisions. This book presents the state of the art achievments, recent developments, applications and future challenges of climbing and walking robots. These are presented in 24 chapters by authors throughtot the world The book serves as a reference especially for the researchers who are interested in mobile robots. It also is useful for industrial engineers and graduate students in advanced study

Bio-Inspired Robotics

Modern robotic technologies have enabled robots to operate in a variety of unstructured and dynamically-changing environments, in addition to traditional structured environments. Robots have, thus, become an important element in our everyday lives. One key approach to develop such intelligent and autonomous robots is to draw inspiration from biological systems. Biological structure, mechanisms, and underlying principles have the potential to provide new ideas to support the improvement of conventional robotic designs and control. Such biological principles usually originate from animal or even plant models, for robots, which can sense, think, walk, swim, crawl, jump or even fly. Thus, it is believed that these bio-inspired methods are becoming increasingly important in the face of complex applications. Bio-inspired robotics is leading to the study of innovative structures and computing with sensory–motor coordination and learning to achieve intelligence, flexibility, stability, and adaptation for emergent robotic applications, such as manipulation, learning, and control. This Special Issue invites original papers of innovative ideas and concepts, new discoveries and improvements, and novel applications and business models relevant to the selected topics of ``Bio-Inspired Robotics''. Bio-Inspired Robotics is a broad topic and an ongoing expanding field. This Special Issue collates 30 papers that address some of the important challenges and opportunities in this broad and expanding field

Advanced human inspired walking strategies for humanoid robots

Cette thèse traite du problème de la locomotion des robots humanoïdes dans le contexte du projet européen KoroiBot. En s'inspirant de l'être humain, l'objectif de ce projet est l'amélioration des capacités des robots humanoïdes à se mouvoir de façon dynamique et polyvalente. Le coeur de l'approche scientifique repose sur l'utilisation du controle optimal, à la fois pour l'identification des couts optimisés par l'être humain et pour leur mise en oeuvre sur les robots des partenaires roboticiens. Cette thèse s'illustre donc par une collaboration à la fois avec des mathématiciens du contrôle et des spécialistes de la modélisation des primitives motrices. Les contributions majeures de cette thèse reposent donc sur la conception de nouveaux algorithmes temps-réel de contrôle pour la locomotion des robots humanoïdes avec nos collégues de l'université d'Heidelberg et leur intégration sur le robot HRP-2. Deux contrôleurs seront présentés, le premier permettant la locomotion multi-contacts avec une connaissance a priori des futures positions des contacts. Le deuxième étant une extension d'un travail réalisé sur de la marche sur sol plat améliorant les performances et ajoutant des fonctionnalitées au précédent algorithme. En collaborant avec des spécialistes du mouvement humain nous avons implementé un contrôleur innovant permettant de suivre des trajectoires cycliques du centre de masse. Nous présenterons aussi un contrôleur corps-complet utilisant, pour le haut du corps, des primitives de mouvements extraites du mouvement humain et pour le bas du corps, un générateur de marche. Les résultats de cette thèse ont été intégrés dans la suite logicielle "Stack-of-Tasks" du LAAS-CNRS.This thesis covers the topic of humanoid robot locomotion in the frame of the European project KoroiBot. The goal of this project is to enhance the ability of humanoid robots to walk in a dynamic and versatile fashion as humans do. Research and innovation studies in KoroiBot rely on optimal control methods both for the identification of cost functions used by human being and for their implementations on robots owned by roboticist partners. Hence, this thesis includes fruitful collaborations with both control mathematicians and experts in motion primitive modeling. The main contributions of this PhD thesis lies in the design of new real time controllers for humanoid robot locomotion with our partners from the University of Heidelberg and their integration on the HRP-2 robot. Two controllers will be shown, one allowing multi-contact locomotion with a prior knowledge of the future contacts. And the second is an extension of a previous work improving performance and providing additional functionalities. In a collaboration with experts in human motion we designed an innovating controller for tracking cyclic trajectories of the center of mass. We also show a whole body controller using upper body movement primitives extracted from human behavior and lower body movement computed by a walking pattern generator. The results of this thesis have been integrated into the LAAS-CNRS "Stack-of-Tasks" software suit