This paper deals with motion planning for a mobile robot moving on a hilly three dimensional terrain and subjected to strong physical interaction constraints. The main contribution of this paper is a planning method which takes into account the dynamics of the robot, the robot/terrain interactions, the kinematic constraints of the robot, and classical constraints. The basic idea of our method i...

In this paper we present a framework for analyzing and determining robot motion plans for situations in which the robot is aaected by an environment that prob-abilistically changes over time. In general, motion planning under uncertainty has recently received substantial interest, and in particular a changing-environment has been recognized as an important aspect of motion planing under uncerta...

Humanoid robots have the potential to become a part of everyday life as their hardware and software challenges are being solved. In this paper we present a system that gets as input a motion trajectory in the form of motion capture data, and produces a controller that controls a humanoid robot in real-time to achieve a motion trajectory that is similar to the input motion data. The controller e...

We have built a small humanoid entertainment robot SDR4X (Sony Dream Robot, a prototype) which does motion performances that are dynamic and elegant. It achieves these performances using newly developed robot actuators, the Intelligent Servo Actuator (ISA) and a control system called Whole Body Cooperative and Real-time Integrated Adaptive Motion Control [5][6]. To support motion control for SD...

This paper presents a sensor-based motion planning algorithm for 3-DOF car-like robots with a nonholonomic constraint. Similar to the classic Bug family algorithms, the proposed algorithm enables the car-like robot to navigate in a completely unknown environment using only the range sensor information. The car-like robot uses the local range sensor view to determine the local path so that it mo...

The paper presents the design and motion planning for a mechanical snake robot that was built at the University of Michigan. The structure of the robot enables it to move without wheels. It is constructed of a series of articulated links, each one with a motor and linear solenoid. Although each link has only one motor, this structure allows the body configuration to be easily controlled thereby...

In this paper the design of a biped robot actuated with Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) springs with minimum degrees of freedom is presented. SMA springs are a class of smart materials that are known for their high power to mass and volume ratios. It was shown that utilizing spring type of SMAs have many advantages as large deformation, smooth motion, silent and clean movement compared to ordinary typ...

Robot imitation is a useful and promising alternative to robot programming. Robot imitation involves two crucial issues. The first is how a robot can imitate a human whose physical structure and properties differ greatly from its own. The second is how the robot can generate various motions from finite programmable patterns (generalization). This paper describes a novel approach to robot imitat...

The subject of this paper is the design, control, and evaluation of a biped–climbing robot featuring a new hybrid hip joint. The hybrid hip provides both prismatic and revolute motion, discretely, to the robot, using a single actuator. This is intended to improve its adaptability in confined environments and its capability to maneuver over and around obstacles. Optimization of the hybrid hip jo...

Future robots are expected to cooperate with humans in daily activities. Efficient cooperation requires new techniques for transferring human skills to robots. In this paper, we present a system that provides a robot with the ability to imitate a motion by observing how a human instructor conducts it. The system consists of the following modules: data acquisition, feature extraction and trackin...