Project

Discipline

robotics; humanoid; locomotion; manipulation; Humanoid robot; series elastic actuators; compliance; full-body motion

Lead
Lay summary
The goal of this project is the purchase of CoMan, an advanced humanoid robotic platform for full-body motion control. The humanoid robot has several interesting properties: (1) it has compliant actuation (i.e. with spring elements) which make it well suited to interact with people and with the environment, (2) it is equipped with multiple sensors, i.e. particular forces sensors, that can be used to perform torque control as opposed to only position control as currently done on most robots, and (3) is has many joints that allow the generation of a large variety of full-body motions both for locomotion and for object manipulation.The robot will be an advanced tool for research in robotics and in human motor control and will allow three innovative projects to be carried out on topics related to full-body motion control, bimanual coordination, and multimodal sensorimotor loops. These research projects will share several innovative ideas such as a control architecture based on coupled dynamical systems, and the fact that locomotion and object manipulation are not seen as separate research topics (as done traditionally) but as part of a single common problem: full body motion control.The purchase of this robot will help keeping Switzerland at the forefront of research in humanoid robotics and human-oriented robotics. Furthermore it will lead to the development of new control concepts applicable to other domains such as neuroprosthetics, as well offer a tool to validate hypotheses on human motor control.

Direct link to Lay Summary

Last update: 21.02.2013

The goal of this proposal is the purchase of an advanced humanoid robotic platform for full-body motion control. The platform will be based at EPFL, and used by four laboratories work-ing on humanoid robotics in Switzerland, namely the Biorobotics Laboratory (headed by Auke Ijspeert, EPFL), the Learning Systems and Algorithms Laboratory (headed by A. Billard, EPFL), the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (headed by R. Pfeifer, University of Zurich) and the Bio-Inspired Robotics Laboratory (headed by F. Iida, ETHZ).The robot will be an advanced tool for research in robotics and in human motor control and will allow three innovative projects to be carried out on topics related to full-body motion con-trol, bimanual coordination, and multimodal sensorimotor loops. These research projects will share several innovative ideas such as a control architecture based on coupled dynamical sys-tems, and the fact that locomotion and object manipulation are not seen as separate research topics (as done traditionally) but as part of a single common problem: full body motion control.The purchase of this robot will help keeping Switzerland at the forefront of research in humanoid robotics and human-oriented robotics. Furthermore it will lead to the development of new control concepts applicable to other domains such as neuroprosthetics, as well offer a tool to validate hypotheses on human motor control.