Physical interaction between human and a bipedal humanoid robot-realization of human-follow walking

This research is aimed at the development of bipedal humanoid robots working in a human living space, with a focus on its physical construction and motion control method. At the first stage, we developed the bipedal humanoid robot WABIAN (Waseda bipedal humanoid), and proposed a control method for dynamic cooperative biped walking. In this paper, we present a follow-walking control method with a switching patterns technique for a bipedal humanoid robot to follow human motion by hand contact. By a combination of both algorithms, the robot is able to perform dynamic stepping and walking forward and backward in a continuous time while someone is pushing or pulling its hand. In this paper, the authors describe the control methods for the realization of physical interaction between a human and a bipedal humanoid robot.