The mobile humanoid Rollin'Justin is a versatile experimental platform for research in manipulation tasks. Previously, different state of the art control methods and first autonomous task execution scenarios have been demonstrated. In this video two new applications with challenging task requirements are presented. One is the catching of one or even two flying balls using all of Justin's degrees of freedom. The other is the autonomous preparation of coffee. Both applications need adequate sensors to support local referencing. The required precision in position and timing is realized in software, using the sensor information, taking the varying precision of Justin's kinematic sub-chains into account and handling all timings in sub-millisecond range.

The covariance matrix adaptation evolution strategy (CMA-ES) has been successfully used to minimize functionals on vector spaces. We generalize the concept of the CMA-ES to Riemannian manifolds and evaluate its performance in two experiments. First, we minimize synthetic functionals on the 2-D sphere. Second, we consider the reconstruction of shapes in 3-D voxel data. A novel formulation of this problem leads to the minimization of edge and region-based segmentation functionals on the Riemannian manifold of parametric 3-D medial axis representation. We compare the results to gradient-based methods on manifolds and particle swarm optimization on tangent spaces and differential evolution.

Research on humanoid robots for use in servicing tasks, e.g. fetching and delivery, attracts steadily more interest. With “Rollin' Justin” a mobile robotic system and research platform is presented that allows sophisticated control algorithms and dexterous manipulation. This video gives an overview of the mobile humanoid robotic system “Rollin' Justin” with special emphasis on mechanical design features, control issues and high-level system capabilities such as human robot interaction.

Research on humanoid robots for use in servicing tasks, e.g. fetching and delivery, attracts steadily more interest. With Rollin' Justin a mobile robotic system and research platform is presented that allows the implementation and demonstration of sophisticated control algorithms and dexterous manipulation. Important problems of service robotics such as mobile manipulation and strategies for using the increased workspace and redundancy in manipulation task can be studied in detail. This paper gives an overview of the design considerations for a mobile platform and their realizations to transform the formerly table-mounted humanoid upper body system Justin into Rollin' Justin, a fully self-sustaining mobile research platform.

Mobile platforms equipped with several steering wheels are known to be omnidirectional, i.e., able to independently translate and rotate on the plane. As an improvement to this design, the Justin mobile platform also possesses the ability to vary its footprint over time by extending/retracting the wheel legs during motion. In this paper, we discuss the kinematic modeling and control issues for such a platform. The goal is to obtain a tracking controller which is able to realize an arbitrary linear/angular platform motion while, at the same time, independently expanding/retracting each leg. Experimental results support the proposed approach.

Walking is a fascinating way of locomotion that is very robust, especially in unstructured terrain. Many researchers devote their time to understanding its underlying principles and to build robots based on their findings. Using the fingers of DLR-Hand II a six-legged actively compliant walking robot is developed. It is intended to be used as testbed for the evaluation of different force- and position-based leg and gait control algorithms for hexapod walking in rough terrain. Following a brief overview of the finger hardware, the use of fingers as legs is analyzed and discussed. The body geometry as well as the systems constituting the robot are described. The compliance control algorithm used is explained and finally some experimental results are presented.

Wheeled-mobile robots operating in human environments typically encounter small steps. Surmounting steps is normally not considered when determining peak torque needs, yet it can be the maximum requirement. This work looks at the statics and dynamics of this situation to determine the necessary peak torque. It finds that using a dynamic model that includes the wheel elasticity is essential for properly representing a real-world tire. When torque is increased using a step function, energy is stored in the tire - higher tire elasticity eases climbing. Knowledge of this phenomenon could facilitate the use of smaller actuators. The model is numerically integrated and results are found to agree with experiment.

We study the evolution of T-spline level sets (i.e, implicitly defined T-spline curves and surfaces). The use of T-splines leads to a sparse representation of the geometry and allows for an adaptation to the given data, which can be unorganized points or images. The evolution process is governed by a combination of prescribed, data-driven normal velocities, and additional distance field constraints. By incorporating the distance field constraints we are able to avoid additional branches and singularities of the T-spline level sets without having to use re-initialization steps. Experimental examples are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach.

Arranging pictures or photographs on a wall or a sheet of paper can be viewed as a layout problem that consists in placing a set of rectangles on a large rectangle so that there are no overlaps, and all edges are parallel to either the vertical or horizontal edge of the large rectangle. Automating this process is sensible in connection with Web page design, in particular if frequent changes occur. For Web pages, it is possible and it makes sense to scale pictures down so as to ensure that there is a solution to any such layout problem. The goal then is to find a layout that arranges the pictures in a way that is pleasing to the eye. We propose to employ an evolutionary approach to evolve layouts, using a representation similar to slicing tree structures, and a fitness measure that incorporates the idea of aesthetic appeal as minimising blank spaces.