Limb-vector paralleling: A general approach to translate postures from human to humanoid robots

Developing intuitive interface to control humanoid robots with high degrees-of-freedom (DOF) in real-time remains as an essential issue. Since most humanoid robots have at least sixteen DOF, achieving real-time performance in controlling humanoid robot posture is hard to accomplish. This paper proposes a method to calculate joint angles of humanoid robots according to human's joint locations tracked by a motion capture system. The objective is to make the humanoid robot imitating human posture in real-time. Our proposed method requires a human motion capture system that could provide at least thirteen 3D joint positions: a pair of arm (shoulder, elbow, hand), a pair of leg (hip, knee, ankle), and a torso. Every joint that interconnects two limbs has to have two DOF. Our proposed method is implemented on RoboBuilder humanoid robot. The experimental results show that the robot can imitate human posture in real-time correctly. Moreover, the results verify that the proposed method is applicable to different type of humanoid robots using WeBots simulation software.