The HERMES humanoid system: A platform for full-body teleoperation with balance feedback

The HERMES humanoid robot system is designed for studying whole-body human-in-the-loop control with balance feedback. Inspired by the innate physical control capabilities of humans as well as the capacity for creative learning, we explore the use of the full-body of the human operator as the controller for a humanoid robot. The state of balance of the robot is displayed as sensory feedback to the human operator applied as force to the waist in order to stimulate corrective teleoperated control actions. This paper addresses the design considerations for such a system and shows initial results for human-in-the-loop-balance control as well as a wall-breaking demonstration that summarizes the breadth of capabilities of the system. Initial results show that the operator can respond to an impact disturbance on the robot within 175 ms and 125 ms after the robot's center of pressure begins to move.