Abstract
A control method for humanoid robots of mobile manipulation is proposed. A robot autonomously generates its whole body motion and steps so as to increase arm manipulability and robot stability, while performing various manipulation tasks with its hands; that enables dexterous and stable manipulation. An objective manipulation task is given as the desired trajectories of both hands, and external forces may be applied to the hands. For carrying out this task, the hands are always controlled along their desired trajectories by impedance control. Coordinating with this motion of the hands, the robot controls its body and legs so that the hands may be easy to perform the task. It determines the next foothold by evaluating manipulabilities of both arms, direction of stable region and moving direction. An evaluation function consisting of manipulabilities of both arms and static stability of the robot is defined, and the robot steps if the new double support state is better than the current one. Both in double and single support states, the robot controls its body pose using the support leg/legs so that this evaluation function may be optimal. The swing leg is moved to the next foothold in single support state. Various motions of humanoid robot“HRP-1”by the proposed method are simulated using dynamic simulator“OpenHRP”.
