EAGER/Collaborative Research: Center-of-Mass Control for Expressive and Effective Movement in Bipedal Robots

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This EArly-concept Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) collaborative project will apply insights from the study of human athletes and dancers to enable similarly effective and expressive movement in humanoid robots. The objective is to create the capability for such movement without duplicating the full complexity and articulation of the human torso. Specifically, the project will implement a novel mechanism for shifting a heavy mass that shifts the robot center of mass independently of limb movements using novel muscle-like actuators, and evaluate the results based on a formal system of movement analysis developed for dance, athletics, and physical therapy. In addition to improving the robot's effectiveness at accomplishing locomotion, i.e., a walking gait, these capabilities will provide new channels for communication between robots and humans, i.e., modulating the style of the walking gait. Humans make unconscious inferences about attitude and intent from observing movement. For example, a robot co-worker will be more effective if its movements communicate trustworthiness and competence to its human partners, and a robot first-responder will be more effective if its movements communicate confidence and leadership during an emergency situation. This project incorporates the interplay of art and technology into outreach activities, such as using dance movements to understand fundamentals of robot locomotion. This project takes a novel approach to generating dynamic walking in a humanoid robot, by exploiting the dynamics of a novel, core-located rolling ball-and-tray actuation mechanism arising from exploration of embodied movement theory. The impedance of the actuator is varied in real time, modulating the robot dynamics to produce qualitatively different excitations. The focus of the project is on controlling the expressive character of robot gait, with explicit comparison to human movement. The goals of the project are to explore the role of center-of-mass control in human walking and to demonstrate the feasibility of the approach for bipedal robotic walking through modeling, simulation, and an initial prototype. The work will model and validate the ball-and-tray actuator via a set of motion primitives designed in accordance with Bartenieff Fundamentals, a formal system of movement analysis. The research team brings together experts in movement science, dynamic walking, and muscle-like actuation. In addition to improving robot performance, this work has the potential to increase the bandwidth of robot-human communications. Expressive movement can convey many different emotional contexts, including urgency, calm, enthusiasm, confidence, et cetera. The ability to engineer these contexts into robot movement has many potential applications in human facing scenarios.