Japan Science and Technology Agency

Chiba Institute of Technology

Leading Edge Design Corp.

Yu Okumura

Takayuki Furuta

Tetsuo Tawara

Hiroaki Kitano

Masaharu Shimizu

Hideaki Yamato

Ken Endo

Masaki Shimomura

Shunji Yamanaka

A car having a rotatable wheel, the car being able to run by rotating the wheel, the car having a leg used by the car for walking, and an attitude stabilization section for stabilizing an attitude of the car.

Car, walking apparatus, and method of determining shape of wheel

A car includes a car body having a bottom portion, a wheel that is rotatable, and a supporting member for supporting the wheel, the supporting member being provided to the bottom portion. At least eight pairs of the wheel and the supporting member are provided. The supporting member has a first supporting portion for supporting the wheel rotatably, a second supporting portion for supporting the first supporting portion so that a direction of the wheel supported by the first supporting portion can be changed, and a turning portion that is rotatable about a rotation axis with its axial direction along a direction orthogonal to the bottom portion, the turning portion being provided to the bottom portion. The turning portion supports the second supporting portion so that a distance between the wheel and the bottom portion can be changed, and a position of the wheel can be moved by a rotation of the turning portion in a state that the distance is maintained.

It is a biped (two-footed) walking humanoid robot, which is provided with drive motors (L,R-L,R,L,R-L,R,) to pivotally move respective joint portions, and a motion control apparatus () to drive-control respective drive motors, and said motion control apparatus (), together with a detector () to detect the robot's current posture and others, compares the robot's detected current posture and others with next motion command input from outside, and if next motion command is within the range of stability limit with respect to the robot's current posture and others, the complementary data with respect to intermediate motion from current posture till initial posture of next motion command and the motion data corresponding to next motion command are generated, each drive motor is drive-controlled based on said complementary and motion data, and thereby various motions are conducted smoothly and continually. It is preferably provided with a motion library () storing time series data of basic motions as the elements of the robot's motions and posture data consisting of algorithm, reads out the corresponding posture data from said motion library, and generates complementary and motion data as the combined motion sequence.

Two-leg walking humanoid robot

The present invention provides a biped (two-footed) walking mobile system, its walk controller, and walk control method therefore, which are to realize enhancing an walk stability, as well as a consumed energy saving. A walk controller () of a biped walking mobile system forms a gait data by a gait forming part () based on parameters from a gait stabilizing part (), and drive-controls drive means of respective joint portions (L,R&#x2013;L,R) of each leg portion based on said gait data. In this case, the walk controller () is so constituted as to selectively witch a powered mode to conduct ordinary drive-control and a passive mode to drive-control the drive means similarly with passive joints, whereby drive-controlling respective joint portions. The walk controller () preferably switches the drive and passive modes with respect to, for example, joint portions of knee and foot portions, or switches to the powered mode for kick-up and landing during walking motion, and to the passive mode for a free foot state.

Biped walking mobile system, its walk controller, and walk control method therefor

A walk controller () for a biped (two-footed) walking mobile system, which drive-controls each joint drive motor (L,R&#x2013;L,R) of each leg portion (L,R) of a biped walking mobile system based on gait data, includes a force detector (L,R) to detect the force allied to a sole of each foot portion (L,R), and a compensator () to modify the gait data from a gait former () based on the force detected by a force detector, and is constituted so that each force detector (L,R) comprises at least three 3-axial force sensors () allocated on a sole of each foot portion () modifies gait data based on the detected signals from three 3-axial force sensors () which detect effective force, thereby the walk stability of a robot is realized, even on the unstable road surface condition with complex roughness.

Two-legged walding locomotion apparatus and its walking controller

The present invention provides a biped (two-footed) walking humanoid robot easily capable of such full body movement as, for example, protective action when tumbling down, arising action and rolling action. The body part () is configured with a waist part () below, a breast part () attached biaxially movably to said waist part, and a drive means () to move said breast part biaxially, and a controller () makes full body movement performed by drive controlling each drive means in mutual coordination. A walk controller () drive controls each drive means in mutual coordination, whereby moving the breast part () biaxially with respect to the waist part (), namely moving longitudinally or rotating horizontally, and thus makes it possible to move totally the upper part configured with the breast part and arm parts with respect to the lower part configured with the waist part () and leg parts () by so-called stoop forward and twisting of a waist. Therefore, protective action when tumbling down, arising action, and rolling action are made possible. Also in case that full body movement is to be performed with the walk controller driving arm parts () and the breast part () and utilizing the weight and the moment of inertia of these arm and a breast parts, a walk controller not only drives each part by each drive means, but also moves or rotates arm and a breast parts with respect to the waist part (), utilizes the weight and the moment of inertia of arm and a breast part with respect to the waist part, and thus makes it possible, for example, to jump. Further, balancing motion can be performed by utilizing such weight and moment of inertia of arm and breast parts, and by conducting three dimensional compensation of the motion utilizing the upper body.

Growing community of inventors

Kanagawa, Japan

Yu Okumura