Disney Enterprises, Inc.

Hongyi Xu

Stelian Coros

Lars Espen Knoop

Moritz Niklaus Bächer

Shayan Hoshyari

Moritz Niklaus Bâcher

A robot control method, and associated robot controllers and robots operating with such methods and controllers, providing computational vibration suppression. Given a desired animation cycle for a robotic system or robot, the control method uses a dynamic simulation of the physical robot, which takes into account the flexible components of the robot, to predict if vibrations will be seen in the physical robot. If vibrations are predicted with the input animation cycle, the control method optimizes the set of motor trajectories to return a set of trajectories that are as close as possible to the artistic or original intent of the provider of the animation cycle, while minimizing unwanted vibration. The new control method or design tool suppresses unwanted vibrations and allows a robot designer to use lighter and/or softer (less stiff) and, therefore, less expensive systems in new robots.

Computational vibration suppression for robotic systems

Methods and corresponding systems that are useful in design and fabrication of kinetic wire mechanisms or characters. The method includes a computational technique for the design of kinetic wire mechanisms tailored for fabrication on consumer-grade hardware such as a desktop CNC bending device. The method takes as input a skeletal animation of the mechanism to be fabricated and estimates, from the skeletal animation, a cable-driven and compliant wire structure, which matches user-selected keyframes. To enable localized deformations, the technique involves shaping the mechanism's body (i.e., the wire) into functional spring-like entities at a set of locations along the length of the mechanism's body. The method involves determining where on the wire body to place these spring-like entities, determining which types or configurations of spring-like entities should be placed at each of these locations, and optimizing parameters of each user-selected spring-like entity for use at the locations on the wire mechanism.

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Zurich, Switzerland

Hongyi Xu