Momentum Control of Humanoid Robots with Series Elastic Actuators

Humanoid robots may require a degree of compliance at the joint level for improving efficiency, shock tolerance, and safe interaction with humans. The presence of joint elasticity, however, complexifies the design of balancing and walking controllers. This paper proposes a control framework for extending momentum based controllers developed for stiff actuators to the case of series elastic actuators. The key point is to consider the motor velocities as an intermediate control input, and then apply high-gain control to stabilise the desired motor velocities achieving momentum control. Simulations carried out on a model of the robot iCub verify the soundness of the proposed approach

Automatic Gain Tuning of a Momentum Based Balancing Controller for Humanoid Robots

This paper proposes a technique for automatic gain tuning of a momentum based balancing controller for humanoid robots. The controller ensures the stabilization of the centroidal dynamics and the associated zero dynamics. Then, the closed-loop, constrained joint space dynamics is linearized and the controller's gains are chosen so as to obtain desired properties of the linearized system. Symmetry and positive definiteness constraints of gain matrices are enforced by proposing a tracker for symmetric positive definite matrices. Simulation results are carried out on the humanoid robot iCub.Comment: Accepted at IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (HUMANOIDS). 201

Instantaneous Momentum-Based Control of Floating Base Systems

In the last two decades a growing number of robotic applications such as autonomous drones, wheeled robots and industrial manipulators started to be employed in several human environments. However, these machines often possess limited locomotion and/or manipulation capabilities, thus reducing the number of achievable tasks and increasing the complexity of robot-environment interaction. Augmenting robots locomotion and manipulation abilities is a fundamental research topic, with a view to enhance robots participation in complex tasks involving safe interaction and cooperation with humans. To this purpose, humanoid robots, aerial manipulators and the novel design of flying humanoid robots are among the most promising platforms researchers are studying in the attempt to remove the existing technological barriers. These robots are often modeled as floating base systems, and have lost the assumption -- typical of fixed base robots -- of having one link always attached to the ground. From the robot control side, contact forces regulation revealed to be fundamental for the execution of interaction tasks. Contact forces can be influenced by directly controlling the robot's momentum rate of change, and this fact gives rise to several momentum-based control strategies. Nevertheless, effective design of force and torque controllers still remains a complex challenge. The variability of sensor load during interaction, the inaccuracy of the force/torque sensing technology and the inherent nonlinearities of robot models are only a few complexities impairing efficient robot force control. This research project focuses on the design of balancing and flight controllers for floating base robots interacting with the surrounding environment. More specifically, the research is built upon the state-of-the-art of momentum-based controllers and applied to three robotic platforms: the humanoid robot iCub, the aerial manipulator OTHex and the jet-powered humanoid robot iRonCub. The project enforces the existing literature with both theoretical and experimental results, aimed at achieving high robot performances and improved stability and robustness, in presence of different physical robot-environment interactions

Selection effects on GRB spectral-energy correlations

Instrumental selection effects can act upon the estimates of the peak energy Ep, the fluence F and the peak flux P of GRBs. If this were the case, then the correlations involving the corresponding rest frame quantities (i.e. Ep, Eiso and the peak luminosity Liso) would be questioned. We estimated, as a function of Ep, the minimum peak flux necessary to trigger a GRB and the minimum fluence a burst must have to determine the value of Ep by considering different instruments (BATSE, Swift, BeppoSAX). We find that the latter dominates over the former. We then study the Ep-fluence (and flux) correlation in the observer plane. GRBs with redshift show well defined Ep-F and Ep-P correlations: in this planes the selection effects are present, but do not determine the found orrelations. This is not true for Swift GRBs with redshift, for which the spectral analysis threshold does affect their distribution in the observer planes. Extending the sample to GRBs without z, we still find a significant Ep-F correlation, although with a larger scatter than that defined by GRBs with redshift. We find that 6% are outliers of the Amati correlation. The Ep-P correlation of GRBs with or without redshift is the same and no outlier is found among bursts without redshift.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures. Contributed to the Proceedings of the Sixth Huntsville GRB Symposiu