Tech United Eindhoven RoboCup adult size humanoid team description 2012

This document presents the 2012 Tech United Eindhoven adult size humanoid robot team from The Netherlands. The team contributes the adult-size humanoid robot TUlip. Here we present the mechanical design and kinematic structure of the robot. We introduce the walking gait and contribute a controller structure including gravity compensation. Finally, we describe the vision system, self localization and world model, which are used for the attacker and defender strategy in the humanoid robot soccer game

Dutch Robotics 2011 adult-size team description

This document presents the 2011 edition of the team Dutch Robotics from The Netherlands. Our team gathers three Dutch technical universities, namely Delft University of Technology, Eindhoven University of Technology and University of Twente, and the commercial company Philips. We contribute an adult-size humanoid robot TUlip, which is designed based on theory of the limit cycle walking developed in our earlier research. The key of our theory is that stable periodic walking gaits can be achieved even without high-bandwidth robot position control. Our control approach is based on simultaneous position and force control. For accurate force control, we make use of the Series Elastic Actuation. The control software of TUlip is based on the Darmstadt’s RoboFrame, and it runs on a PC104 computer with Linux Xenomai. The vision system consists of two wide-angle cameras, each interfaced with a dedicated Blackfin processor running vision algorithms, and a wireless networking interface

Dutch Robotics 2010 adult-size team description

This document presents the 2010 edition of the team Dutch Robotics from The Netherlands. Our team gathers three Dutch technical universities, namely Delft University of Technology, Eindhoven University of Technology and University of Twente, and the commercial company Philips. We contribute an adult-size humanoid robot TUlip, which is designed based on theory of the limit cycle walking developed in our earlier research. The key of our theory is that stable periodic walking gaits can be achieved even without high-bandwidth robot position control. Our control approach is based on simultaneous position and force control. For accurate force control, we make use of the Series Elastic Actuation. The control software of TUlip is based on the Darmstadt’s RoboFrame, and it runs on a PC104 computer with Linux Xenomai. The vision system consists of two wide-angle cameras, each interfaced with a dedicated Blackfin processor running vision algorithms, and a wireless networking interface

Foot placement indicator for balance of planar bipeds with point feet

When humanoid robots are going to be used in society, they should be capable to maintain the balance. Knowing where to step appears to be crucially important to remain balanced. In this paper we contribute an algorithm for planar bipeds with point feet and an arbitrary number of non-massless links that can compute the foot step location such that bipedal balance is maintained. We call this algorithm the foot placement indicator (FPI). It is based on the foot placement estimator (FPE) and uses conservation of energy throughout the step taking into account the instantaneous impact dynamics at foot strike. A simulation case study on a five-link planar biped shows the effectiveness off the FPI

Gravity compensation for a bipedal humanoid robot

Many research is nowadays done on humanoid robots. They can be very helpful in the future, for example in nursery homes to assist the nurses. The big advantages of humanoid robots is that they can operate in the human environment. At the Eindhoven University of Technology the robot TUlip is used as an experimental platform. TUlip is a bipedal humanoid robot with six actuators in each leg. When the robot is in double support phase the robot loses some degrees of freedom and becomes over actuated. The goal of this project is to design a feedforward gravity compensation algorithm which facilitates the feedback controllers of the robot joints and deals with the problem of over actuation. To obtain a feedforward algorithm which facilitates the feedback controllers of TUlip, calculations with the manipulator Jacobian are taken as a basis in designing the algorithm. When a certain force is desired on the tip of a robot manipulator the manipulator Jacobian can be used to calculate the required joint torques. In the case of the robot the torso is taken as a static basis with two robot manipulators as its legs. When a foot is in the support phase there are ground contact forces acting on this foot (the tip of the robot manipulator). These ground contact forces are estimated to determine the forces at the feet of the robot and these estimations are than used to calculate the required gravity compensation torques. The obtained algorithm is implemented in a Matlab, SimMechanics simulation model and simulations are performed with the robot in different static positions to verify if the obtained gravity compensation algorithm is helping the robot. From the simulation results it can be concluded that the obtained gravity compensation algorithm does not calculate satisfactory values. The reason for this is probably that the torso of the robot can not be taken as a static basis. Namely it is assumed that the forces guided through the torso from one leg to the other can be neglected. The forces guided through the torso are probably of significant matter that they can not be neglected. For the future it is recommended to investigate if it is possible to include the forces guided through the torso from one leg to the other. Another approach could be to leave some of the joints unactuated so that the robot is no longer over actuated