• ETRI Journal
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• v.40 no.4
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• pp.446-457
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• 2018

Robot navigation allows robot mobility. Therefore, mobility is an area of robotics that has been actively investigated since robots were first developed. In recent years, interest in personal service robots for homes and public facilities has increased. As a result, robot navigation within the home environment, which is an indoor environment, is being actively investigated. However, the problem with conventional navigation algorithms is that they require a large computation time for their building mapping and path planning processes. This problem makes it difficult to cope with an environment that changes in real-time. Therefore, we propose a humanoid robot navigation algorithm consisting of an image processing and optimization algorithm. This algorithm realizes navigation with less computation time than conventional navigation algorithms using map building and path planning processes, and can cope with an environment that changes in real-time.

• International Journal of Fuzzy Logic and Intelligent Systems
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.203-209
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• 2010

This paper presents a hierarchical fuzzy motion planner for humanoid robots in 3D uneven environments. First, we define both motion primitives and locomotion primitives of humanoid robots. A high-level planner finds a global path from a global navigation map that is generated based on a combination of 2.5 dimensional maps of the workspace. We use a passage map, an obstacle map and a gradient map of obstacles to distinguish obstacles. A mid-level planner creates subgoals that help the robot efficiently cope with various obstacles using only a small set of locomotion primitives that are useful for stable navigation of the robot. We use a local obstacle map to find the subgoals along the global path. A low-level planner searches for an optimal sequence of locomotion primitives between subgoals by using fuzzy motion planning. We verify our approach on a virtual humanoid robot in a simulated environment. Simulation results show a reduction in planning time and the feasibility of the proposed method.

• Journal of KIISE:Software and Applications
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• v.37 no.8
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• pp.641-646
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• 2010

This paper presents algorithms for real-time navigation of a humanoid robot with a stereo vision but no other sensors. Using the algorithms, a robot can recognize its 3D environment by retrieving SIFT features from images, estimate its position through the Kalman filter, and plan its path to reach a destination avoiding obstacles. Our approach focuses on estimating the robot’s central walking path trajectory rather than its actual walking motion by using an approximate model. This strategy makes it possible to apply mobile robot localization approaches to humanoid robot localization. Simple collision free path planning and motion control enable the autonomous robot navigation. Experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of our approach.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.10 no.5
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• pp.2142-2148
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• 2015

This paper proposes novel real-time footstep planning and following methods for the navigation of humanoid robots. A footstep command is defined by a walking direction and step lengths for footstep planning. The walking direction is determined by a uni-vector field navigation method, and the allowable yawing range caused by hardware limitation is considered. The lateral step length is determined to avoid collisions between the two legs while walking. The sagittal step length is modified by a binary search algorithm when collision occurs between the robot body and obstacles in a narrow space. If the robot body still collides with obstacles despite the modification of the sagittal step length, the lateral step length is shifted at the next footstep. For footstep following, a walking pattern generator based on a 3-D linear inverted pendulum model is utilized, which can generate modifiable walking patterns using the zero-moment point variation scheme. Therefore, it enables a humanoid robot to follow the footstep command planned for each footstep. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified through simulation and experiment.

• Journal of Advanced Navigation Technology
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.132-137
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• 2017

This paper proposes a transformation method of the zero moment point (ZMP) and the center of mass (CoM) from one walking pattern to other patterns by considering the structure of a robot or walking situations in real time. In general, a humanoid robot has own structure characteristics like height and mass. The structure characteristics make the given CoM/ZMP walking pattern of one human or one humanoid robot to be difficult to apply to other robot directly. For this purpose, we analyze the characteristics of walking patterns according to the step length, duration of walking support phase and the CoM height by using the cart-table model as the simple humanoid robot model. A transformation equation is derived from the analyzation and it is verified with simulation.

• Journal of Advanced Navigation Technology
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.705-713
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• 2009

This paper proposes CORBA-based visual servoing system of humanoid robot. To effectively control the humanoid robot which is connected to network, it needs to define necessary services for visual servoing as distribution object, and realize them in the middleware. For realizing it following services should be addressed. Naming service for searching a necessary service with unique name assigned to each object, image service for supplying image obtained from stereo camera. In the experiment, we show the result of balloon tracking and bursting that the robot tracks balloons as target objects in the real time, and if a balloon stop for a certain time, then the robot bursts the balloon.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.22 no.11
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• pp.904-911
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• 2016

This paper presents a novel driving system by the humanoid robot to drive a vehicle in disaster response situations. To enhance robot's capability for substituting human activities in responding to natural and man-made disaster, the one of prerequisite skills for the rescue robot is the mounted mobility to maneuver a vehicle safely in disaster site. Therefore, our driving system for the humanoid is developed in order to steer a vehicle through unknown obstacles even under poor communication conditions such as time-delay and black-out. Especially, the proposed system includes a tele-manipulation interface and stable navigation strategies. First, we propose a new type of path estimation method to overcome limited communication. Second, we establish navigation strategies when the operator cannot recognize obstacles based on Dynamic Window Approach. The effectiveness of the proposed developments is verified through simulation and experiments, which demonstrate suitable system for driving a vehicle in disaster response.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems Conference
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• 2007.04a
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• pp.7-10
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• 2007

This paper presents a fuzzy footstep planner for humanoid robots in complex environments. First, we define locomotion primitives for humanoid robots. A global planner finds a global path from a navigation map that is generated based on a combination of 2.5 dimensional maps of the 3D workspace. A local planner searches for an optimal sequence of locomotion primitives along the global path by using fuzzy footstep planning. We verify our approach on a virtual humanoid robot in a simulated environment. Simulation results show a reduction in planning time and the feasibility of the proposed method.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.260-269
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• 2021

To verify performance or conduct experiments using actual robots, a lot of costs are needed such as robot hardware, experimental space, and time. Therefore, a simulation environment is an essential tool in robotics research. In this paper, we develop the HUMIC simulator using ROS and Gazebo. HUMIC is a humanoid robot, which is developed by HCIR Lab., for human-robot interaction and an upper body of HUMIC is similar to humans with a head, body, waist, arms, and hands. The Gazebo is an open-source three-dimensional robot simulator that provides the ability to simulate robots accurately and efficiently along with simulated indoor and outdoor environments. We develop a GUI for users to easily simulate and manipulate the HUMIC simulator. Moreover, we open the developed HUMIC simulator and GUI for other robotics researchers to use. We test the developed HUMIC simulator for object detection and reinforcement learning-based navigation tasks successfully. As a further study, we plan to develop robot behavior intelligence based on reinforcement learning algorithms using the developed simulator, and then apply it to the real robot.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Technology Engineers
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.441-447
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• 2015

This paper proposes a novel fuzzy-based multi-criteria decision making method and implements a footstep planner for humanoid robots with it. Humanoid robots require additional footstep planning process in addition to path planning for the autonomous navigation. Moreover, it is necessary to consider safety and energy consumption as well as path efficiency and multi-criteria decision making is indispensable. The proposed method can provide not only well- distributed and non-dominated, but also more preferable solutions for users. The planned footsteps by the proposed method were verified through simulation. The results indicate that the user's preference is properly reflected in optimized solutions maintaining solution quality.