Mobile manipulation of humanoid robots-body and leg control for dual arm manipulation

A control method for humanoid robots of mobile manipulation is proposed. A robot autonomously steps or controls its body pose while performing various manipulation tasks with its hands; that enables dexterous and stable manipulation. Two hands always move along their desired trajectories by impedance control for carrying out a given task. Coordinating with this motion of the hands, the robot controls its body and legs so that arm manipulability and robot stability may increase. It determines the next foothold by evaluating manipulabilities of both arms, shape of stable region and moving direction. An evaluation function consisting of manipulabilities of both arms and static stability of the robot is defined, and the robot steps if the new double support state is better than the current one. Both in double and single support states, the robot controls its body pose using the support leg(s) so that this evaluation may be optimal. Various motions of a humanoid robot by the proposed method are simulated.