As with its full-body counterpart, Little HERMES is designed for teleoperation, with an operator suited up in a vest to control the robot’s actions.įor the robot to copy the operator’s balance rather than just their motions, the team had to first find a simple way to represent balance. The team engineered the robot as simply a torso and two legs, and designed the system specifically to test lower-body tasks, such as locomotion and balance. “We needed to copy the operator’s dynamic balance.”Įnter Little HERMES, a miniature version of HERMES that is about a third the size of an average human adult. “We realized in order to generate high forces or move heavy objects, just copying motions wouldn’t be enough, because the robot would fall easily,” Kim says. If the robot were required to take any steps, however, it would have likely tipped over in attempting to mimic the operator’s motions. Balance, in these cases, was much simpler to maintain. HERMES was able to carry out high-impact motions because the robot was rooted in place. In demonstrations, HERMES has poured coffee into a cup, wielded an ax to chop wood, and handled an extinguisher to put out a fire.Īll these tasks have involved the robot’s upper body and algorithms to match the robot’s limb positioning with that of its operator’s. “Because you have a person who can learn and adapt on the fly, a robot can perform motions that it’s never practiced before ,” Ramos says. Previously, Kim and Ramos built the two-legged robot HERMES (for Highly Efficient Robotic Mechanisms and Electromechanical System) and developed methods for it to mimic the motions of an operator via teleoperation, an approach that the researchers say comes with certain humanistic advantages. His co-author on the study is Sangbae Kim, associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. Ramos, who is now an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has detailed the approach in a study appearing today in Science Robotics. “Now if you want to open a heavy door, the human can command the robot to throw its body at the door and push it open, without losing balance.” “It’s like running with a heavy backpack - you can feel how the dynamics of the backpack move around you, and you can compensate properly,” says Joao Ramos, who developed the approach as an MIT postdoc. In experiments with the robot to test this new “balance feedback” approach, the researchers were able to remotely maintain the robot’s balance as it jumped and walked in place in sync with its human operator. If the robot is starting to tip over, the human feels a corresponding pull on the vest and can adjust in a way to rebalance both herself and, synchronously, the robot. Through the vest, the human operator can both direct the robot’s locomotion and feel the robot’s motions. The team’s robot, physically resembling a machined torso and two legs, is controlled remotely by a human operator wearing a vest that transmits information about the human’s motion and ground reaction forces to the robot. Now engineers at MIT and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed a method to control balance in a two-legged, teleoperated robot - an essential step toward enabling a humanoid to carry out high-impact tasks in challenging environments. But getting two-legged, humanoid robots to exert force or push against something without falling has been a significant stumbling block. Imagine, for instance, rescue-bots that can bound through rubble on all fours, then rise up on two legs to push aside a heavy obstacle or break through a locked door.Įngineers are making strides on the design of four-legged robots and their ability to run, jump and even do backflips. Rescuing victims from a burning building, a chemical spill, or any disaster that is inaccessible to human responders could one day be a mission for resilient, adaptable robots.
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