Development of a humanoid robot CENTAUR-design, human interface, planning and control of its upper-body

A humanoid robot system called CENTAUR is presented including its mechanical structure, human interface, vision-based motion planning algorithm and embedded real-time controller. All of these subsystems are integrated to enable the robot to perform a variety of tasks with intelligence, sensing and actuation. CENTAUR consists of two arms, two hands, four legs. In addition to its human-like kinematic structure, it also has a stereo vision system for object recognition and a voice recognition/synthesis for human interface. The trajectories are generated from an online motion planner integrated with vision as well as an off-line motion planner. A new master arm is developed for the operators to drive CENTAUR. The master arm is equipped with electric brakes for force feedback. Due to the large number of joints, a multi-layered controller structure has been developed from the low level distributed joint controllers to the high level supervisory controller.