Controlling tendon driven humanoids with a wearable device with Direct-Mapping Method

In this paper we propose a “Direct-Mapping Method” and describe a wearable device which has a similar muscle arrangement as a tendon-driven humanoid robot. This device has linear-encoders as many as the muscles of the robot to control, and they are arranged like the robot's muscle alignment. Tendon-driven humanoids have advantages of their human size, multiple Degrees of freedoms and their musclo-skeletal structure, therefore they are able to make more human-like poses than shaft-driven humanoid robots. If we can teach human poses to them, they become more human-like so that we feel a sense of familiarity with robots. However, because of their complex structure, sometimes they make incorrect poses. There must be a feedback system to control their bones in detail. To make human-like pose naturally and to make precise motion by feed back to the user, the best way may be a wearable device. With this device, we can control tendon-driven humanoids without making their simulation model in the computer. We discuss the hardware settings of the device and the controlling system in this paper. Experiments of controlling a tendon-driven humanoid were conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the device. When controlling the robot, a situation that some muscles are loose or too tight occured. However, this device's behavior-teaching framework contributes to detailed robotic movement in the future.