A new field of robotics is emerging. Robots are making their way into the everyday world that people inhabit. This research focuses on the models, strategies, and algorithms associated with the autonomous behaviors to look and feel like humans.
Our effort in this area has resulted in a task-oriented framework for whole robot dynamic coordination and control. The dynamic coordination strategy we developed is based on two models concerned with the task dynamics and the robot posture behavior. The task dynamic behavior model is obtained by projection of the robot dynamics into the space associated with the task, while the posture behavior is characterized by the complement of this projection. To control these two behaviors, a consistent control structure is required.
In the above set of pictures the task of the robot is to lift a heavy glass cylinder. This is realized by computing the dynamics in task space and compensating for them. The task is commanded by computing the difference in positions and rotations with respect to the teleoperation device. Applying forces to the center of mass of the robot control the posture. The goal is to move the center of mass to the center of the feet plane. Once the posture is computed a null space filter is applied to it canceling the coupling on the task behavior.

For any questions regarding this project, please contact Luis Sentis.

"Synthesis of whole-body behaviors through hierarchical control of behavioral primitives"
 Luis Sentis, Oussama Khatib
International Journal of Humanoid Robotics, 2005


"Control of Free-Floating Humanoid Robots Through Task Prioritization"
 Luis Sentis, Oussama Khatib
Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference in Robotics and Automation, Barcelona, Spain, April 2005


"Task-Oriented Control of Humanoid Robots Through Prioritization"
 Sentis, L, Khatib, O.
Proc. IEEE-RAS/RSJ International Conference on Humanoid Robots, Santa Monica, USA, November 2004


"Whole Body Dynamic Behavior and Control of Human-Like Robots"
 Oussama Khatib, Luis Sentis, Jae-Heung Park, James Warren
International Journal of Humanoid Robotics, 1(1): 29-43, March 2004


"Human-Like Motion From Physiologically-Based Potential Energies"
 Khatib, O., Warren, J., De Sapio, V., Sentis, L.
On Advances in Robot Kinematics, J. Lenarcic and C. Galletti (Eds.), pp. 149-163, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004.


"Efficient algorithms for robots with human-like structures and interactive haptic simulation"
 Khatib, O., Brock, O., Chang, K., Conti, F., Ruspini, D., Sentis, L.
Advances in Robot Kinematics:Theory and Applications, Eds, Lenarcic, J. and Thomas, F., Kluwer Academic Publishers 2002, pp. 89-98.

"Human-Centered Robotics and Interactive Haptic Simulation"
 Khatib, O., Brock, O., Chang, K.C., Ruspini, D., Sentis, L., Viji, S.
Human-Centered Robotics and Interactive Haptic Simulation. Submitted to ISRR International Symposium of Robotics Research 2001


Last update: 11 - 2001 by F.Conti