Télé-opération Corps Complet de Robots Humanoïdes

This thesis aims to investigate systems and tools for teleoperating a humanoid robot. Robotteleoperation is crucial to send and control robots in environments that are dangerous or inaccessiblefor humans (e.g., disaster response scenarios, contaminated environments, or extraterrestrialsites). The term teleoperation most commonly refers to direct and continuous control of a robot.In this case, the human operator guides the motion of the robot with her/his own physical motionor through some physical input device. One of the main challenges is to control the robot in a waythat guarantees its dynamical balance while trying to follow the human references. In addition,the human operator needs some feedback about the state of the robot and its work site through remotesensors in order to comprehend the situation or feel physically present at the site, producingeffective robot behaviors. Complications arise when the communication network is non-ideal. Inthis case the commands from human to robot together with the feedback from robot to human canbe delayed. These delays can be very disturbing for the human operator, who cannot teleoperatetheir robot avatar in an effective way.Another crucial point to consider when setting up a teleoperation system is the large numberof parameters that have to be tuned to effectively control the teleoperated robots. Machinelearning approaches and stochastic optimizers can be used to automate the learning of some of theparameters.In this thesis, we proposed a teleoperation system that has been tested on the humanoid robotiCub. We used an inertial-technology-based motion capture suit as input device to control thehumanoid and a virtual reality headset connected to the robot cameras to get some visual feedback.We first translated the human movements into equivalent robot ones by developping a motionretargeting approach that achieves human-likeness while trying to ensure the feasibility of thetransferred motion. We then implemented a whole-body controller to enable the robot to trackthe retargeted human motion. The controller has been later optimized in simulation to achieve agood tracking of the whole-body reference movements, by recurring to a multi-objective stochasticoptimizer, which allowed us to find robust solutions working on the real robot in few trials.To teleoperate walking motions, we implemented a higher-level teleoperation mode in whichthe user can use a joystick to send reference commands to the robot. We integrated this setting inthe teleoperation system, which allows the user to switch between the two different modes.A major problem preventing the deployment of such systems in real applications is the presenceof communication delays between the human input and the feedback from the robot: evena few hundred milliseconds of delay can irremediably disturb the operator, let alone a few seconds.To overcome these delays, we introduced a system in which a humanoid robot executescommands before it actually receives them, so that the visual feedback appears to be synchronizedto the operator, whereas the robot executed the commands in the past. To do so, the robot continuouslypredicts future commands by querying a machine learning model that is trained on pasttrajectories and conditioned on the last received commands.Cette thèse vise à étudier des systèmes et des outils pour la télé-opération d’un robot humanoïde.La téléopération de robots est cruciale pour envoyer et contrôler les robots dans des environnementsdangereux ou inaccessibles pour les humains (par exemple, des scénarios d’interventionen cas de catastrophe, des environnements contaminés ou des sites extraterrestres). Le terme téléopérationdésigne le plus souvent le contrôle direct et continu d’un robot. Dans ce cas, l’opérateurhumain guide le mouvement du robot avec son propre mouvement physique ou via un dispositifde contrôle. L’un des principaux défis est de contrôler le robot de manière à garantir son équilibredynamique tout en essayant de suivre les références humaines. De plus, l’opérateur humain abesoin d’un retour d’information sur l’état du robot et de son site via des capteurs à distance afind’appréhender la situation ou de se sentir physiquement présent sur le site, produisant des comportementsde robot efficaces. Des complications surviennent lorsque le réseau de communicationn’est pas idéal. Dans ce cas, les commandes de l’homme au robot ainsi que la rétroaction du robotà l’homme peuvent être retardées. Ces délais peuvent être très gênants pour l’opérateur humain,qui ne peut pas télé-opérer efficacement son avatar robotique.Un autre point crucial à considérer lors de la mise en place d’un système de télé-opérationest le grand nombre de paramètres qui doivent être réglés pour contrôler efficacement les robotstélé-opérés. Des approches d’apprentissage automatique et des optimiseurs stochastiques peuventêtre utilisés pour automatiser l’apprentissage de certains paramètres.Dans cette thèse, nous avons proposé un système de télé-opération qui a été testé sur le robothumanoïde iCub. Nous avons utilisé une combinaison de capture de mouvement basée sur latechnologie inertielle comme périphérique de contrôle pour l’humanoïde et un casque de réalitévirtuelle connecté aux caméras du robot pour obtenir un retour visuel. Nous avons d’abord traduitles mouvements humains en mouvements robotiques équivalents en développant une approchede retargeting de mouvement qui atteint la ressemblance humaine tout en essayant d’assurer lafaisabilité du mouvement transféré. Nous avons ensuite implémenté un contrôleur du corps entierpour permettre au robot de suivre le mouvement humain reciblé. Le contrôleur a ensuite étéoptimisé en simulation pour obtenir un bon suivi des mouvements de référence du corps entier,en recourant à un optimiseur stochastique multi-objectifs, ce qui nous a permis de trouver dessolutions robustes fonctionnant sur le robot réel en quelques essais.Pour télé-opérer les mouvements de marche, nous avons implémenté un mode de télé-opérationde niveau supérieur dans lequel l’utilisateur peut utiliser un joystick pour envoyer des commandesde référence au robot. Nous avons intégré ce paramètre dans le système de télé-opération, ce quipermet à l’utilisateur de basculer entre les deux modes différents.Un problème majeur empêchant le déploiement de tels systèmes dans des applications réellesest la présence de retards de communication entre l’entrée humaine et le retour du robot: mêmequelques centaines de millisecondes de retard peuvent irrémédiablement perturber l’opérateur,encore plus quelques secondes. Pour surmonter ces retards, nous avons introduit un système danslequel un robot humanoïde exécute des commandes avant de les recevoir, de sorte que le retourvisuel semble être synchronisé avec l’opérateur, alors que le robot exécutait les commandes dansle passé. Pour ce faire, le robot prédit en permanence les commandes futures en interrogeant unmodèle d’apprentissage automatique formé sur les trajectoires passées et conditionné aux dernièrescommandes reçues

심층 강화학습을 이용한 사람의 모션을 통한 이형적 캐릭터 제어기 개발

학위논문(석사) -- 서울대학교대학원 : 공과대학 컴퓨터공학부, 2022. 8. 서진욱.사람의 모션을 이용한 로봇 컨트롤 인터페이스는 사용자의 직관과 로봇의 모터 능력을 합하여 위험한 환경에서 로봇의 유연한 작동을 만들어낸다. 하지만, 휴머노이드 외의 사족보행 로봇이나 육족보행 로봇을 위한 모션 인터페이스를 디자인 하는 것은 쉬운일이 아니다. 이것은 사람과 로봇 사이의 형태 차이로 오는 다이나믹스 차이와 제어 전략이 크게 차이나기 때문이다. 우리는 사람 사용자가 움직임을 통하여 사족보행 로봇에서 부드럽게 여러 과제를 수행할 수 있게끔 하는 새로운 모션 제어 시스템을 제안한다. 우리는 우선 캡쳐한 사람의 모션을 상응하는 로봇의 모션으로 리타겟 시킨다. 이때 상응하는 로봇의 모션은 유저가 의도한 의미를 내포하게 되며, 우리는 이를 지도학습 방법과 후처리 기술을 이용하여 가능케 하였다. 그 뒤 우리는 모션을 모사하는 학습을 커리큘럼 학습과 병행하여 주어진 리타겟된 참조 모션을 따라가는 제어 정책을 생성하였다. 우리는 "전문가 집단"을 학습함으로 모션 리타게팅 모듈과 모션 모사 모듈의 성능을 크게 증가시켰다. 결과에서 볼 수 있듯, 우리의 시스템을 이용하여 사용자가 사족보행 로봇의 서있기, 앉기, 기울이기, 팔 뻗기, 걷기, 돌기와 같은 다양한 모터 과제들을 시뮬레이션 환경과 현실에서 둘 다 수행할 수 있었다. 우리는 연구의 성능을 평가하기 위하여 다양한 분석을 하였으며, 특히 우리 시스템의 각각의 요소들의 중요성을 보여줄 수 있는 실험들을 진행하였다.A human motion-based interface fuses operator intuitions with the motor capabilities of robots, enabling adaptable robot operations in dangerous environments. However, the challenge of designing a motion interface for non-humanoid robots, such as quadrupeds or hexapods, is emerged from the different morphology and dynamics of a human controller, leading to an ambiguity of control strategy. We propose a novel control framework that allows human operators to execute various motor skills on a quadrupedal robot by their motion. Our system first retargets the captured human motion into the corresponding robot motion with the operator's intended semantics. The supervised learning and post-processing techniques allow this retargeting skill which is ambiguity-free and suitable for control policy training. To enable a robot to track a given retargeted motion, we then obtain the control policy from reinforcement learning that imitates the given reference motion with designed curriculums. We additionally enhance the system's performance by introducing a set of experts. Finally, we randomize the domain parameters to adapt the physically simulated motor skills to real-world tasks. We demonstrate that a human operator can perform various motor tasks using our system including standing, tilting, manipulating, sitting, walking, and steering on both physically simulated and real quadruped robots. We also analyze the performance of each system component ablation study.1 Introduction 1 2 Related Work 5 2.1 Legged Robot Control 5 2.2 Motion Imitation 6 2.3 Motion-based Control 7 3 Overview 9 4 Motion Retargeting Module 11 4.1 Motion Retargeting Network 12 4.2 Post-processing for Consistency 14 4.3 A Set of Experts for Multi-task Support 15 5 Motion Imitation Module 17 5.1 Background: Reinforcement Learning 18 5.2 Formulation of Motion Imitation 18 5.3 Curriculum Learning over Tasks and Difficulties 21 5.4 Hierarchical Control with States 21 5.5 Domain Randomization 22 6 Results and Analysis 23 6.1 Experimental Setup 23 6.2 Motion Performance 24 6.3 Analysis 28 6.4 Comparison to Other Methods 31 7 Conclusion And Future Work 32 Bibliography 34 Abstract (In Korean) 44 감사의 글 45석

What do Collaborations with the Arts Have to Say About Human-Robot Interaction?

This is a collection of papers presented at the workshop What Do Collaborations with the Arts Have to Say About HRI , held at the 2010 Human-Robot Interaction Conference, in Osaka, Japan

Transfert de Mouvement Humain vers Robot Humanoïde

Le but de cette thèse est le transfert du mouvement humain vers un robot humanoïde en ligne. Dans une première partie, le mouvement humain, enregistré par un système de capture de mouvement, est analysé pour extraire des caractéristiques qui doivent être transférées vers le robot humanoïde. Dans un deuxième temps, le mouvement du robot qui comprend ces caractéristiques est calculé en utilisant la cinématique inverse avec priorité. L'ensemble des tâches avec leurs priorités est ainsi transféré. La méthode permet une reproduction du mouvement la plus fidèle possible, en ligne et pour le haut du corps. Finalement, nous étudions le problème du transfert mouvement des pieds. Pour cette étude, le mouvement des pieds est analysé pour extraire les trajectoires euclidiennes qui sont adaptées au robot. Les trajectoires du centre du masse qui garantit que le robot ne tombe pas sont calculées `a partir de la position des pieds et du modèle du pendule inverse. Il est ainsi possible réaliser une imitation complète incluant les mouvements du haut du corps ainsi que les mouvements des pieds. ABSTRACT : The aim of this thesis is to transfer human motion to a humanoid robot online. In the first part of this work, the human motion recorded by a motion capture system is analyzed to extract salient features that are to be transferred on the humanoid robot. We introduce the humanoid normalized model as the set of motion properties. In the second part of this work, the robot motion that includes the human motion features is computed using the inverse kinematics with priority. In order to transfer the motion properties a stack of tasks is predefined. Each motion property in the humanoid normalized model corresponds to one target in the stack of tasks. We propose a framework to transfer human motion online as close as possible to a human motion performance for the upper body. Finally, we study the problem of transfering feet motion. In this study, the motion of feet is analyzed to extract the Euclidean trajectories adapted to the robot. Moreover, the trajectory of the center of mass which ensures that the robot does not fall is calculated from the feet positions and the inverse pendulum model of the robot. Using this result, it is possible to achieve complete imitation of upper body movements and including feet motio

Robotics 2010

Without a doubt, robotics has made an incredible progress over the last decades. The vision of developing, designing and creating technical systems that help humans to achieve hard and complex tasks, has intelligently led to an incredible variety of solutions. There are barely technical fields that could exhibit more interdisciplinary interconnections like robotics. This fact is generated by highly complex challenges imposed by robotic systems, especially the requirement on intelligent and autonomous operation. This book tries to give an insight into the evolutionary process that takes place in robotics. It provides articles covering a wide range of this exciting area. The progress of technical challenges and concepts may illuminate the relationship between developments that seem to be completely different at first sight. The robotics remains an exciting scientific and engineering field. The community looks optimistically ahead and also looks forward for the future challenges and new development

Robot manipulation in human environments

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2007.Includes bibliographical references (p. 211-228).Human environments present special challenges for robot manipulation. They are often dynamic, difficult to predict, and beyond the control of a robot engineer. Fortunately, many characteristics of these settings can be used to a robot's advantage. Human environments are typically populated by people, and a robot can rely on the guidance and assistance of a human collaborator. Everyday objects exhibit common, task-relevant features that reduce the cognitive load required for the object's use. Many tasks can be achieved through the detection and control of these sparse perceptual features. And finally, a robot is more than a passive observer of the world. It can use its body to reduce its perceptual uncertainty about the world. In this thesis we present advances in robot manipulation that address the unique challenges of human environments. We describe the design of a humanoid robot named Domo, develop methods that allow Domo to assist a person in everyday tasks, and discuss general strategies for building robots that work alongside people in their homes and workplaces.by Aaron Ladd Edsinger.Ph.D

Advances in Human-Robot Interaction

Rapid advances in the field of robotics have made it possible to use robots not just in industrial automation but also in entertainment, rehabilitation, and home service. Since robots will likely affect many aspects of human existence, fundamental questions of human-robot interaction must be formulated and, if at all possible, resolved. Some of these questions are addressed in this collection of papers by leading HRI researchers

The Future of Humanoid Robots

This book provides state of the art scientific and engineering research findings and developments in the field of humanoid robotics and its applications. It is expected that humanoids will change the way we interact with machines, and will have the ability to blend perfectly into an environment already designed for humans. The book contains chapters that aim to discover the future abilities of humanoid robots by presenting a variety of integrated research in various scientific and engineering fields, such as locomotion, perception, adaptive behavior, human-robot interaction, neuroscience and machine learning. The book is designed to be accessible and practical, with an emphasis on useful information to those working in the fields of robotics, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, computational methods and other fields of science directly or indirectly related to the development and usage of future humanoid robots. The editor of the book has extensive R&D experience, patents, and publications in the area of humanoid robotics, and his experience is reflected in editing the content of the book