The Human Centered Robotics Group

The video below shows a simulation of our Phase Space Planner in a very difficult terrain. Because the model has no ankle joints, the locomotion maneuver is highly dynamic.

NASA, the Human Centered Robotics Lab at UT Austin and Texas A&M made it to the DRC Trials. Here Valkyrie manipulates a valve while standing up. Valkyrie is a new bipedal robot that was designed and built from scratch in just 9 months. Although this year we did not have a lot of time to get the hardware and software finalized to fully compete, we are here in the competition for the endgame in 2014.

 

 

In the first video, Valkyrie, aided by a new whole-body compliant control and planning architecture, turns an industrial valve while being assisted by a skilled operator. In the second video, Valkyrie undergoes a series of tests to coordinate her upper and lower body.

A new control architecture that utilizes effectively the force controlled Series Elastic Actuators of Hume is put to use for precision motion tracking under gravity disturbances.

 

“Implementation and stability analysis of prioritized whole-body compliant controllers on a wheeled humanoid robot in uneven terrains”, Springer’s Autonomous Robots, Vol. 35, Nu. 4, pp. 301-319, August 2013.

Click on the image below for a link to the PDF

Bumping into walls

Bumping into humans!

 

“Design and Control Considerations for High Performance Series Elastic Actuators”, IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, In Press

Link to the video

Click on the image below for a link to the PDF

 

Dreamer receives a new 7 Degree of Freedom, Series Elastic Arm manufactured by Meka. A new gripper is being designed to allow dual hand manipulation.