Although the need for humans and robots to work together in close proximity is increasing, this is currently not allowed with conventional industrial robots for reasons of safety. Next generation robots that can work safely in close proximity with humans must not only be highly functional, but must also be highly reliable with built in safety features. With this aim in mind, we have developed a safety module that integrates safety functions required for robots to work side by side with humans. The safety module is designed to be compliant with international safety standards and Japanese law. Redundant sensory signal processing by an external hardware module and plug-in software installed in the robot controller ensure high-reliability and flexibility. This paper describes the concept and design of the safety module and shows some evaluation results of its safety functions.

In this paper we realize a real-time communication on Ethernet and develop an onbody distributed control system for a humanoid robot, HRP-3P. Real-time communication on Ethernet is realized by (1) a communication method using the data link layer directly and (2) timing control using a real-time operating system ARTLinux. This enables us to reduce the cost of embedded systems and improve developmental efficiency. A CORBA implementation which works on this communication layer is also developed to increase compatibility with existing software. Finally a small-size distributed robot controller is developed for the onbody network of HRP-3P and a distributed I/O system is developed on top of this

This paper studies the balance of a humanoid robot carrying a heavy object. Without knowing the mass and the position of the center of gravity of the object, the humanoid robot carries a heavy object stably by using the force sensor information attached at the wrists and the ankles. We first show how to generate the motion of a humamoid robot by taking the force sensor information into consideration. We also show the method for generating the gait pattern by taking the dynamics of the carried object. The effectiveness of the proposed method is shown by experiments.

A humanoid robot is a real-time system controlled by a complex computer system that requires huge computing power for perception and planning, high energy efficiency for self-contained control, reduction of physical dimensions, and high reliability. This paper proposes a distributed architecture for the humanoid robot control substituting conventional centralized control architectures. In addition to the parallelism that provides scalable computing power at low clock namely at low energy, the distributed architecture contributes to reliable operations by replacing many fragile analog signal wires with a digital network with redundant routes. In order to accomplish a real-time control over the network, RMTP (responsive multi-threaded processor) for parallel and real-time computation has been newly designed. RMTP can synchronize more than thirty nodes distributed over a robot body in less than 5 micro second with a real time network called the responsive link (RL). Architectures of RMTP, RL and Linux-based real-time system software are presented.

We previously reported the first human-sized humanoid robot that can fall down safely and stand up again. This paper examines the falling motion control by supplementary simulations and presents an improvement of the control by optimizing the control parameters. The UKEMI falling over control of a human-sized humanoid robot is simulated, the simulation results are compared with the experimental results of real humanoid robot.

The establishment of an intuitive and effective whole body operation method is essential for the utilization of humanoid robots in real world tasks. Here we introduce a method for humanoid robot foot teleoperation, as a part of our whole body teleoperation system using only a simple joystick device. This paper explains a framework for real-time foot operation which incorporates the operator's foot command and robot's autonomy in maintaining balance. We describe the algorithm of an autonomous function which shifts the position of the robot's center of mass interactively based on the operator's command and the current feet condition of the robot. We report on successful experimental results of teleoperating a real humanoid robot HRP-2 using the proposed method.

This paper investigates a method through which human-size humanoid robot can fall over backwards safely. Squatting-extending motion of legs reduce impact of falling and shock-absorbing parts of the robot keep the force at a permissible range. The robot could stand up itself again after falling.