Jumping and landing movements are characterized by large instantaneous forces, short duration, and a high uncertainty concerning take off and landing points. Such characteristics make conventional types of control and robot design inadequate. Here we present an approach to realize motor control of jumping and landing which exploits the synergy between control and mechanical structure. Our experimental system is a pneumatically actuated bipedal robot called "Mowgli". Mowgli's artificial musculoskeletal system consists of six McKibben pneumatic muscle actuators including bi-articular muscle and two legs with hip, knee, and ankle joints. Mowgli can reach jump heights of more than 50% of its body height and can land softly. Our results show a proximo-distal sequence of joint extensions during jumping despite simultaneous motor activity. Extensions in the whole body motion are caused by the compliance and the natural dynamics of the legs. In addition to the experiments with the real robot, we also simulated two types of open loop controllers for vertical jumping with disturbance. We found that the model controlled by open loop motor command through a muscle-tendon mechanism could jump robustly. The simulation results demonstrate the contribution of the artificial musculoskeletal system as a physical feedback loop in explosive movements.

We present the design and realization of a conformable tactile sensor skin (patent pending). The skin is organized as a network of self-contained modules consisting of tiny pressure-sensitive elements which communicate through a serial bus. By adding or removing modules it is possible to adjust the area covered by the skin as well as the number (and density) of tactile elements. The skin is therefore highly modular and thus intrinsically scalable. Moreover, because the substrate on which the modules are mounted is sufficiently pliable to be folded and stiff enough to be cut, it is possible to freely distribute the individual tactile elements. A tactile skin composed of multiple modules can also be installed on curved surfaces. Due to their easy configurability we call our sensors "cut-and-paste tactile sensors." We describe a prototype implementation of the skin on a humanoid robot

This paper presents the final stage of development of the humanoid system, ETL-Humanoid. It is full-scale humanoid system with 46 degrees of freedom, with the height and weight of an average Japanese person. It was designed as an experimental platform, to explore the general principle of controls of complex embodied systems. The complete system will be presented; the mechanical configuration of the system and the low-level network-based control system will also be presented. The final system possesses properties of compactness, modularity and is light in weight. The mechanical system is high in performance, is backdrivable and compliant, allowing the possibility of a wide range of motions and capabilities. The general capability of being able to support itself is demonstrated. A "Chin Up" experiment showing the physical strength of our system is presented. The system is able to support its own body weight while rising up to a supporting bar. Aside from its physical strength, the system is also capable of performing higher-level perceptions and actions. These capabilities will be briefly presented.

Presents the hardware of the upper body of the ETL-Humanoid system. It has 24 degrees of freedom with high performance actuators, which gives the system high mobility, such as is required for pushups, lifting itself or another person. The mechanical design is able to achieve human proportions, with smooth outer shape, and is light weight at a very high level, considering the high motor performance embedded inside. Custom compact electronics for AC servo control and fast embedded network for control and measurement was also developed. The system is still evolving, being used as a working testbed for versatile human interaction experiments.

CPG (central pattern generator) and entrainment dynamics together form a promising framework for robust and adaptive behavior generation for a high degree of freedom system in unstructured environment. This paper investigates its possibility in the domain of biped robotic locomotion. We extend a previous work on 2D biped locomotion using neural oscillators to 3D, introducing many more degrees of freedom and complexity in control. While the complexity of the problem has been increased, we have simplified the internal neural mechanism compared to the original 2D work. Our fully dynamic 3D simulation experiments showed that our mechanism can generate 3D stable biped stepping motion as well as tolerance against external perturbations.

This paper considers the humanoid research as an approach to understanding and realizing complex real world interactions among the robot, environment, and human. As a first step towards extracting a common principle over the three term interactions, the concept of action oriented control has been investigated with simulation example. The complex interaction view casts unique constraints on the design of a humanoid, such as the whole body, smooth shape and non-functional-modular design. A brief description of ongoing design of ETL-humanoid which conforms to the above constraints is presented.

The development of a wall climbing robot which is able to move over the surface of "3-dimensional terrain", a terrain including floor, wall, ceiling of any kinds of structures with agility and terrain adaptability is strongly demanded in many industries. The conventional wall-climbing machines were far from fulfilling the demand, the authors thus have been developing a wall-climbing robot with four-terrain-adaptive legs and basic mobilities were already demonstrated by the manufactured prototype model NINJA-I. However, as there are almost no examples of wall-climbing quadrupedal animals and conventional machines, the gait control method specific for the quadruped wall-climbing is not at all known by now. As the first step to consider a general gait problem of a quadruped wall-climbing robot, this paper investigates a gait of the robot on a vertical and flat wall. The gait is analyzed with the criterion to maximize the locomotion speed under the constraints of predetermined conditions of the supporting-legs position, order and phases of swing legs to prevent turn over motion. As a result of the analysis, the optimal standard gait, named "Wall Gait", is shown to maintain foot posture of /spl Lambda/ shape and moves the leg in the order of leg1-leg2-leg4-leg3 in static walk and the order of "pace" in dynamic walk.>