A New Way to Make Humanoids Walk - Work in Progress

 Tomomichi Sugihara  of Kyushu University is an expert on humanoid robots. His works include the H series  (H5, H6 and H7) and the UT-mu series. He provided the software for isamu, UT-theta and UT-gamma. He is one of the Superstars.

 

(Photo: Dr. Sugihara with one of his creations - a pale pink robot named "mighty")

 So it may come as a surprise for some people when he says that "humanoids of the future will NOT be based on current technology." During the history of humanoid research, he says, "we've accumulated lots of know-how on building the robots supported by advances in mechatronic technologies." "But there hasn't been much progress in the theoretics of how we control them and make them walk autonomously."

 But what about the ASIMO? 

 "ASIMO and most of the other humanoids are based on trajectory planning and when something goes wrong - such as an unexpected obstacle showing up - they have to correct their paths. The greatness of ASIMO is how well it can adjust. But there is always going to be limits when you have a preset trajectory. So we as roboticists have to gather up our courage to move back to square one and come up with a completely new method."

 Dr. Sugihara has ideas. He has named his new controlling method "Dynamics Morphing." Details will be described in his upcoming paper. 

 His goal?  "To develop a general-purpose humanoid tool. Versatile enough so that users can decide how to use them - just like the PC."

Comments

[Robotbling]

Very interesting! I look forward to seeing his ideas in action. Thank you for sharing this.