Design and Implementation of the Reconfiguration Mechanism for a Modular Humanoid Robot

Tetsuya Taira; Nobuyuki Yamasaki

doi:10.20965/jrm.2006.p0286

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JRM Vol.18 No.3 pp. 286-298

doi: 10.20965/jrm.2006.p0286

(2006)

Paper:

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Design and Implementation of the Reconfiguration Mechanism for a Modular Humanoid Robot

Tetsuya Taira, and Nobuyuki Yamasaki

School of Science for Open and Environmental Systems, Keio University, 3-14-1 Hiyoshi, Kohoku-ku, Yokohama, Kanagawa 223-8522, Japan

Received:

October 31, 2005

Accepted:

April 17, 2006

Published:

June 20, 2006

Keywords:

robot system architecture, humanoid robots, modular robot systems, reconfigurable mechanism, parallel/distributed systems, embedded systems

Abstract

This paper describes the design and implementation of the reconfiguration mechanism for a modular humanoid robot. To aid researchers in their works and enable users to request various tasks, humanoid robots are expected to require such reconfiguration mechanism. A robot with the proposed reconfiguration mechanism potentially consists of several functional modules such as arms, mobile components, and heads, and can be used as some kinds of humanoid robots or as several autonomous functional robots. We evaluated the efficiency of our proposed reconfiguration mechanism through the experiences using reconfigurable modular humanoid robot prototype R1. Experimental results show that the proposed mechanism achieves expandable and flexible reconfiguration for researchers and users by changing the robot configuration to different types of robots for many purposes. We believe that our humanoid robot with the proposed reconfiguration mechanism will enable user-specific humanoid robots more easily than ever before.

Cite this article as:

T. Taira and N. Yamasaki, “Design and Implementation of the Reconfiguration Mechanism for a Modular Humanoid Robot,” J. Robot. Mechatron., Vol.18 No.3, pp. 286-298, 2006.

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References

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This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internationa License.

[1] [1] T. Taira, N. Kamata, and N. Yamasaki, “Design and Implementation of Reconfigurable Modular Humanoid Robot Architecture,” In Proc. of the 2005 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pp. 1071-1076, 2005.

[2] [2] T. Taira, and N. Yamasaki, “Development of Modular Humanoid Robot based on Functionally Distributed Modular Robot Architecture,” Journal of Robotics and Mechatronics, Vol.17, No.3, pp. 236-247, 2005.

[3] [3] T. Fukuda, and Y. Kawauchi, “Cellular Robotic System (CEBOT) as One of the Realization of Self-Organizing Intelligent Universal Manipulator,” In Proc. of IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pp. 662-667, 1990.

[4] [4] S. Murata, E. Yoshida, K. Tomita, H. Kurokawa, A. Kamimura, and S. Kokaji, “Hardware Design of Modular Robotic System,” In Proc. of IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pp. 2210-2217, 2000.

[5] [5] M. Fujita, and K. Kageyama, “An Open Architecture for Robot Entertainment,” In Proc. of International Conference on Autonomous Agents, pp. 435-442, 1997.

[6] [6] M. Fujita, H. Kitano, and K. Kageyama, “A Reconfigurable Robot Platform,” Robotics and Autonomous, Vol.29, pp. 119-132, 1999.

[7] [7] S. Kagami, K. Nishiwaki, J. Kuffner, Y. Kuniyoshi, M. Inaba, and H. Inoue, “Online 3D Vision, Motion Planning and Bipedal Locomotion Control Coupling System of Humanoid Robot: H7,” In Proc. of IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pp. 2557-2562, 2002.

[8] [8] K. Kaneko, F. Kanehiro, S. Kajita, K. Yokoyama, K. Akachi, T. Kawasaki, S. Ota, and T. Isozumi, “Design of Prototype Humanoid Robotics Platform for HRP,” In Proc. of IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pp. 2431-2436, 2002.

[9] [9] V. Yodaiken, and M. Barabanov, “RT-Linux,”
http://www.rtlinux.org .

[10] [10] Y. Ishiwata, and T. Matsui, “Development of Linux which has Advanced Real-Time Processing Function,” In Proc. 16th Annual Conference of Robotics Society of Japan, pp. 355-356, 1998.

[11] [11] R. Bischoff, and V. Graefe, “Integrating, Vision, Touch and Natural Language in the Control of a Situation-Oriented Behavior-Based Humanoid Robot,” In Proc. of IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, pp. 999-1004, 1999.

[12] [12] T. Ishida, “Development of a Small Biped Entertainment Robot QRIO,” In Proc. of IEEE International Symposium on Micromechatronics and Human Science, 2004.

[13] [13] Bosch, “CAN specification version 2.0,” Published by Robert Bosch GmbH, September, 1991.

[14] [14] A. Kamimura, S. Murata, E. Yoshida, H. Kurokawa, K. Tomita, and S. Kokaji, “Self-Reconfigurable Modular Robot,” In Proc. of IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pp. 606-612, 2001.

[15] [15] SH,
http://www.renesas.com/ .

[16] [16] N. Yamasaki, “Responsive Processor for Parallel/Distributed Real-Time Control,” In Proc. of IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pp. 1238-1244, October, 2001.

[17] [17] “Universal Serial Bus Specification Revision 2.0,”
http://www.usb.org , 2000.

[18] [18] Microsoft Corp, “Plug and Play Design Specification for IEEE1394V.1.0c,”
http://www.microsoft.com , 1999.

[19] [19] Flexray,
http://www.flexray-group.com/ .

[20] [20] Resposive Link,
http://www.itscj.ipsj.or.jp/ipsj-ts/02-06/toc.htm .

[21] [21] H. Kobayashi, and N. Yamasaki, “RT-Frontier: A Real-Time Operating System for Practical Imprecise Computation,” In Proc. of the 10th IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium, pp. 255-264, May, 2004.