Dynamic Mobile Manipulation via Whole-Body Bilateral Teleoperation of a Wheeled Humanoid

Amartya Purushottam, Christopher Xu, Yeongtae Jung, Joao Ramos

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Humanoid robots have the potential to help human workers by realizing physically demanding manipulation tasks such as moving large boxes within warehouses. We define such tasks as Dynamic Mobile Manipulation (DMM). This letter presents a framework for DMM via whole-body teleoperation, built upon three key contributions: Firstly, a teleoperation framework employing a Human Machine Interface (HMI) and a bi-wheeled humanoid, SATYRR, is proposed. Secondly, the study introduces a dynamic locomotion mapping, utilizing human-robot reduced order models, and a kinematic retargeting strategy for manipulation tasks. Additionally, the letter discusses the role of whole-body haptic feedback for wheeled humanoid control. Finally, the system's effectiveness and mappings for DMM are validated through locomanipulation experiments and heavy box pushing tasks. Here we show two forms of DMM: grasping a target moving at an average speed of 0.4 m/s, and pushing boxes weighing up to 105% of the robot's weight. By simultaneously adjusting their pitch and using their arms, the pilot adjusts the robot pose to apply larger contact forces and move a heavy box at a constant velocity of 0.2 m/s.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)1214-1221
Number of pages8
JournalIEEE Robotics and Automation Letters
Volume9
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Feb 1 2024
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Humanoid whole-body control
  • human and humanoid motion analysis and synthesis
  • human-in-the-loop
  • motion retargeting
  • telerobotics and teleoperation

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Mechanical Engineering
  • Control and Optimization
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Control and Systems Engineering
  • Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
  • Biomedical Engineering
  • Computer Science Applications

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