Optimizing Human Motion for the Control of a Humanoid Robot

Using pre-recorded human motion and trajectory tracking, we can control the motion of a humanoid robot for freespace, upper body gestures. However, the number of degrees of freedom, range of joint motion, and achievable joint velocities of today’s humanoid robots are far more limited than those of the average human subject. In this paper, we explore a set of techniques for limiting human motion of upper body gestures to that achievable by a Sarcos humanoid robot located at ATR. In particular we have found that it is important to preserve the configuration of the hands and head for upper body motion. We assess the quality of the results by comparing the motion of the human actor to that of the robot, both visually and quantitatively.