Humanoid robot learns to clean a whiteboard

A humanoid robot learns to clean a whiteboard by upper-body kinesthetic teaching. The research is from an Italian-Japanese collaboration between the Italian Institute of Technology and Tokyo City University.

The video shows a Japanese humanoid robot (Fujitsu HOAP-2) learning a surface cleaning task by imitation learning. The presented approach allows a free-standing, self-balancing humanoid robot to acquire new motor skills by kinesthetic teaching. The method controls simultaneously the upper and lower body of the robot with different control strategies. Imitation learning is used for training the upper body via kinesthetic teaching, while at the same time ankle/hip reaction motion patterns are used for keeping the balance of the robot. During demonstration, a force/torque sensor is used to record the exerted forces, and during reproduction, a hybrid position/force controller is used to reproduce the learned trajectories in terms of positions and forces to the end effector.

This research will be presented at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) in May 2011 in Shanghai, China.


Paper abstract:
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We present an integrated approach allowing a free-standing humanoid robot to acquire new motor skills by kinesthetic teaching. The proposed method controls simultaneously the upper and lower body of the robot with different control strategies. Imitation learning is used for training the upper body of the humanoid robot via kinesthetic teaching, while at the same time Reaction Null Space method is used for keeping the balance of the robot. During demonstration, a force/torque sensor is used to record the exerted forces, and during reproduction, we use a hybrid position/force controller to apply the learned trajectories in terms of positions and forces to the end effector. The proposed method is tested on a 25-DOF Fujitsu HOAP-2 humanoid robot with a surface cleaning task.


Video credits:
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Dr. Petar Kormushev (IIT)
http://kormushev.com

Prof. Dragomir N. Nenchev (TCU)
http://www.rls.mse.tcu.ac.jp/


Affiliations:
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IIT - Italian Institute of Technology, Advanced Robotics Dept.
TCU - Tokyo City University, Mechanical Systems Engineering Dept.


Photos of whiteboard cleaning robot HOAP-2:
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/petar_ko...


Other videos:
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Robot learns to flip pancakes
http://kormushev.com/research/videos/


Link to publication:
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Kormushev, P., Nenchev, D.N., Calinon, S., and Caldwell, D.G., "Upper-body Kinesthetic Teaching of a Free-standing Humanoid Robot", IEEE Intl. Conf. on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2011), 2011.
http://kormushev.com/research/publica...

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• Category

  Science & Technology

[Billcasey]

Our Robot Overlords are erasing all Hoap...

[bryr74]

Wow - only gonna take hours instead of seconds to erase a normal schoolroom board each day.

Amazing

[jameswalker199]

I want one! How much? (I'm joking of course, but it would be cool)

[happinesson]

salute to the ROBOTIC EXPERT! this moves exactly like a human!

[candizzle20]

@zonkedhombre That sounds like it could painful, with even the smallest malfunction. Yeah I see a lot of cock and ball injuries in the future. I really hope that doesn't become popular, the shake weight is definitely not as entertaining.

[TomStraub]

WOW! THE MATRIX IS BECOMING REALITY!!!!

[chile280589]

holy shit! an ass just commented!

[zoo1619]

Do you see the possibilities here guys! In a few years robots will be able to erase whiteboards within 30 minutes!

[Born222kill]

Lol @ 4x 5x 6x Speed.

[Asadullah21]

Awsome!