High-Power Lightweight Robot Upper Body for Humanoid Manipulation Research
Abstract
Our research objective is to develop groundbreaking new capabilities for robotic manipulation inenvironments such as ships and disaster sites. Robots must be able to navigate and manipulate inthese environments for critical tasks such as finding survivors or per"forming maintenance. Seeingthis need, the DoD has invested heavily in humanoid robotics in recent years, including the DARPARoboti""cs Challenge in 2015 and the Shipboard Firefighting (SAFFiR) work supported by ONR.However, the development of humanoid manipulatio"n algorithms has been hampered by a lackof suitable hardware. Many robot arms exist for industrial tasks and although they are fast" andprecise, they are also very heavy and difficult to integrate on a humanoid platform. Lightweightarms do exists but they have e"ither a poor power-to-weight ratio or lack the precision necessaryto do dexterous tasks like servicing a valve (a common maintenanc"e task on Navy ships). Aunique motor has recently been developed by HDT, which does have the proper requirements.We propose to pur"chase a lightweight 16DoF humanoid upper-body from HDT to make advancesin manipulation research for DoD-relevant tasks. This will allow us to significantly advance thework on our current ONR project on humanoid whole-body locomotion and benefit our ONRfundedcollaborators at Virginia Tech. It will also allow us to perform more advanced manipulationresearch on our deformable object manipulat"ion project proposed to ONR. Finally, there is also thepotential for integrating this hardware with legged locomotion platforms at" University of Michiganto create a fully-integrated humanoid robot and use the robot in outreach efforts to motivate highschoolers"to pursue STEM careers, which is a key national education priority.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- May 05, 2017
- Source ID
- N000141712303
Entities
People
- Dmitry Berenson
Organizations
- Board of Regents of the University of Michigan
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy