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Zhangguo Yu 1, 2 and Qiang Huang 1, 2, 3 and Gan Ma 1 and Xuechao Chen 1, 2 and Weimin Zhang 1, 2 and Jing Li 1 and Junyao Gao 1, 2
Academic Editor:Yong Tao
1, Intelligent Robotics Institute, School of Mechatronical Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China
2, Key Laboratory of Biomimetic Robots and Systems, Beijing Institute of Technology, Ministry of Education, Beijing 100081, China
3, Key Laboratory of Intelligent Control and Decision of Complex System, Beijing 100081, China
Received 21 February 2014; Accepted 13 April 2014; 3 August 2014
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
1. Introduction
A humanoid robot features the body shape analogous to that of human being. This makes it possess the locomotion and manipulation capabilities similar to human being. It is expected that a humanoid robot may work or assist people in the human-centered environment without a need to adapt itself or to modify the environment. Therefore many researchers have made great efforts in this field. In recent decades, a series of humanoid robots such as ASIMO [1, 2], WABIAN [3], HRP [4, 5], QRIO [6] KHR [7], HRP3L-JSK [8], JOHNNIE [9], Atlas [10], THBIP [11], BHR [12, 13], and a robot from Toyota Corp. [14] have been unveiled. Some researchers investigated the advanced control methods for biped robots [15-17].
Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT) launched the research on humanoid robots in 2000 and has developed generations of humanoid robot named BHR (BIT Humanoid Robots). The first four generations, from BHR-1 to BHR-4, successfully perform walking and complicated coordinated motions, such as Taichi, swordplay, and facial expressions, without external cables [12, 18]. Due to the limit of the mechanical structure and mechatronics system, the previous generations of robots could not satisfy the requirements of the fast responsively coordinated whole-body motion under unforeseen circumstances; for example, they cannot play table-tennis. Hence, a new humanoid robot, BHR-5, is developed.
To achieve fast tasks, a humanoid robot should possess the property of high stiffness, light weight and inertia, high power output, and more rigorous real-time information sensing and processing...