JP2005288561A - Humanoid robot - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a humanoid robot of wheel type inverted pendulum, moving at high speed while having high walking performance. <P>SOLUTION: This humanoid robot 10 can perform bipedal moving with right and left legs 32R, 32L provided at the lower side of the body 16. A rubber wheel 46 is fitted to the tip of each leg 32 by an infinite rotating yaw axis joint 44, and the erected state (not shown) of the axis of the infinite rotation yaw axis joint and the state of bending at right-angles are switched by a roll axis joint 42 to perform bipedal moving, or moving as a wheel type inverted pendulum robot by rotation of the wheel. According to the invention, while high walking performnace of bipedal moving is secured, high-speed moving on wheels can be performed. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2006,JPO&NCIPI

Description

  The present invention relates to a humanoid robot, and more particularly to, for example, a wheel-type inverted pendulum humanoid robot in which wheels are attached to two feet of a humanoid robot.

  An example of this type of wheeled inverted pendulum humanoid robot is introduced in Non-Patent Document 1. The wheel-type inverted pendulum humanoid robot of Non-Patent Document 1 is provided with a wheel at the tip of a foot, and enables walking on stairs while being a wheel-type inverted pendulum robot.

  Non-Patent Document 2 proposes a quadruped walking robot called Roller-Walker (trade name).

On the other hand, the present inventors have proposed and developed a biped humanoid robot (trade name: Robovie-M) introduced in Non-Patent Document 3.
http://www.mel.go.jp/soshiki/robot/undo/matsumoto/matsumoto.html http://www-robot.mes.titech.ac.jp/robot/walking/rollerwalker/rollerwalker.html http://www.vstone.co.jp/top/p_info/robot/robovie-m.html

  The wheel-type inverted pendulum humanoid robot proposed in Non-Patent Document 1 has only two degrees of freedom in the hip joint (joint that generates motion on the same plane) and no other joints. Alternatively, high-speed movement and stair walking on some rough terrain can be performed, but the movement is limited to field movement on a plane perpendicular to the floor surface, and three-dimensional free movement is not possible. Therefore, the leveling performance is somewhat weak. Moreover, it cannot move even on some rough terrain during wheel movement.

  The quadruped walking robot of Non-Patent Document 2 is a robot that attaches passive wheels to the tip of the foot and produces thrust with the same drive system as the drive system for quadruped walking. It is possible to move. However, even in the case of wheel movement, this prior art robot moves by a method of obtaining thrust by sequentially moving the left and right feet. Therefore, high-speed movement like an inverted pendulum type is not possible.

  The humanoid robot of Non-Patent Document 3 can overcome obstacles such as grooves by bipedal walking movement, so it has good traverse performance, but its movement speed is slow, and movement at higher speed is desired.

  Therefore, a main object of the present invention is to provide a wheel-type inverted pendulum humanoid robot that has high traverse performance and can move at high speed.

  According to the first aspect of the present invention, in a humanoid robot capable of walking on two legs with the left and right legs provided below the torso, a wheel is attached to the tip of each leg by an infinite rotation yaw axis joint, and the infinite rotation yaw axis joint is upright It is a humanoid robot provided with a mechanism for switching between a state and a state bent 90 degrees.

  According to the first aspect of the present invention, two legs (32R, 32L) are provided below the body (16: reference numerals corresponding to parts in the embodiment, the same applies hereinafter), and an infinite rotation yaw shaft is provided at the tip of each leg. The wheels (46R, 46L) are attached by joints (44R, 44L). Then, for example, by switching between the state where the shaft of the infinite rotation yaw shaft joint is upright and the state where the endless rotation yaw shaft joint is bent 90 degrees by a mechanism including roll shaft joints (42R, 42L), in the former state The robot can move by walking on two legs, or in the latter state, it can move as a wheel-type inverted pendulum robot.

  A second aspect of the present invention is the humanoid robot according to the first aspect, wherein the mechanism includes a roll axis joint.

  According to the present invention, it is possible to switch between bipedal walking in a state where the axis of the yaw axis joint is upright and wheel movement in a state where the yaw axis joint is bent 90 degrees. Therefore, high traverse performance is exhibited by walking on two legs, and high-speed movement with wheels is also possible.

  The above object, other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become more apparent from the following detailed description of embodiments with reference to the drawings.

  FIG. 1 is an illustrative view showing a model of a humanoid robot (hereinafter, simply referred to as a “robot”) 10 according to an embodiment of the present invention. The robot 10 according to this embodiment is arranged in a vertical direction or a vertical direction. The body 16 is formed between the upper and lower horizontal lines 12 and 14 including two horizontal lines 12 and 14 provided at intervals.

  One yaw shaft joint 18 that forms the degree of freedom of the chest is provided on the upper portion of the body 16, and one pitch shaft joint 20 that forms the degree of freedom of the waist is provided below the body 16. . As is well known, the yaw axis is a vertical rotation axis (Z axis), the pitch axis is one of two axes perpendicular to the yaw axis, for example, the X axis, and will be described later. The roll axis is the other of the two axes perpendicular to the yaw axis, for example, the Y axis. The X axis (pitch axis) is a rotation axis extending in a direction parallel to the paper surface of FIG. 1, and the Y axis (roll axis) is a rotation axis extending in a direction perpendicular to the paper surface of FIG.

  Arms 22 </ b> R and 22 </ b> L are attached to both ends of the upper horizontal arm 12, respectively. These left and right arms 22R and 22L have the same configuration. When it is necessary to distinguish between right and left, “R” indicating right or “L” indicating left is added, and when it is not necessary to distinguish, “R” or “L” is not added. Therefore, duplicate descriptions are omitted as much as possible. The same applies to the feet described later.

  The arm 22 includes a roll shaft joint 24 that forms a degree of freedom of the shoulder, and is attached to the upper lateral reed 12 by the shoulder joint 24 so as to be rotatable around the roll shaft. In front of the shoulder joint 24, one pitch shaft joint 26, one yaw shaft joint 28, and one roll shaft joint 30 are connected in series. Therefore, in the robot 10 of this embodiment, the arm 22 has 4 degrees of freedom and 8 degrees of freedom on the left and right.

  In addition, legs 32R and 32L are attached to both ends of the lower lying heel 14, respectively. The foot 32 is attached to the lower recumbent joint 14 by one roll shaft joint 34 that forms a degree of freedom of the hip joint. In the lower end direction from the hip joint 32, three pitch shaft joints 36, 38 and 40, which are continuous, And a series connection of one roll shaft joint 42 and one yaw shaft joint 44 is attached. For example, a rubber wheel 46 that is rotated integrally with the yaw shaft joint 44 is attached to the tip of the lowest yaw shaft joint 44. Therefore, in the case of the robot 10 of this embodiment, the foot 32 has 6 degrees of freedom and 12 degrees of freedom on the left and right.

  However, the yaw shaft joints 28R and 28L are finite rotation joints, but the yaw shaft joints 44R and 44L at the tips of the legs 32R and 32L are both modified to infinite rotation joints.

  The electrical configuration of the robot 10 of the embodiment of FIG. 1 is shown in the block diagram of FIG. As shown in FIG. 2, the robot 10 includes a microcomputer or CPU 48 for overall control. The CPU 48 includes a memory 52, a motor control board 54, and a sensor input / output board 56 through a bus 50. Connected.

  Although not shown, the memory 52 includes a ROM and a RAM, and a control program for the robot 10 is written in the ROM in advance. The RAM is used as a temporary storage memory and can be used as a working memory.

  To the sensor input / output board 56, one biaxial acceleration sensor 58 provided on the body 16 of FIG. 1 and a joint angle sensor 60 are connected. The joint angle sensor 60 is shown as one block, but actually includes 22 joint angle sensors that are individually provided for the 22 joints described above and detect the respective joint angles. The biaxial acceleration sensor 58 can detect acceleration with two axes in the front-rear direction and the left-right direction of the robot 10. Using the output of the biaxial acceleration sensor 58, the CPU 48 controls biped walking of the robot 10 and running of an inverted pendulum wheel.

  The motor control board 54 is configured by a DSP (Digital Signal Processor), for example, and controls each joint axis motor of each arm and leg. In FIG. 2, for the sake of simplification, only four motors 62R, 62L, 64R, and 64L that are characteristic of this embodiment are clearly shown, but in reality, each of the 22 joints described above is shown. Note that one motor (servo motor) is provided.

  The right foot roll motor 62R is a motor that controls the joint angle of the roll shaft joint 42R in FIG. 1, and the left foot roll shaft motor 62L is a motor that controls the joint angle of the roll shaft joint 42L in FIG. Similarly, the right foot yaw axis motor 64R is a motor that controls the joint angle (rotation) of the right foot yaw axis joint 44R in FIG. 1, and the left foot yaw axis motor 64L determines the joint angle (rotation) of the left foot yaw axis joint 44L. It is a motor to control.

  In the embodiment shown in FIG. 1, when the CPU 48 controls the motors 62R and 62L, the roll shaft joint 42R at the lower right foot and the roll shaft joint 42L at the lower left foot are respectively rotated 90 degrees outward as shown in FIG. The peripheral side surfaces (rotation surfaces) of the rubber wheels 46R and 46L supported by the yaw shaft joints 44R and 44L are grounded at the tips of the legs 32R and 32L. Then, by causing the CPU 48 to rotate the yaw axis motors 64R and 64L infinitely, the robot 10 can move on the ground (floor) 66 by the rubber wheels 46R and 46L. At this time, if the CPU 48 controls the wheel 46, that is, the yaw axis motor 64, as the coaxial two-wheel inverted pendulum model, the robot 10 of this embodiment becomes a wheel-type inverted pendulum humanoid robot.

  Note that a specific method for controlling wheels and the like as a coaxial two-wheel inverted pendulum model is known in, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-271243, and thus description thereof is omitted here.

  In the embodiment of FIG. 1, if the roll shaft joints 42R and 42L are left in the state shown in FIG. 1, the robot 10 of this embodiment naturally has a multi-joint as shown in the previous Non-Patent Document 3. Operates as a biped robot with a degree of freedom.

  In consideration of the stability, when functioning as an inverted pendulum robot, it is better to control the foot roll shaft joints 42R and 42L so that the wheels 46R and 46L are outside as shown in FIG. Of course, the wheels may be inside if possible.

  In the embodiment, since the wheels 46R and 46L are set outward by the foot roll shaft joints 42R and 42L, by controlling the roll shafts 42R and 42L from the CPU 48, the biped walking robot mode is automatically set. The mode of the wheel inverted pendulum type robot can be switched. However, the two modes may be switched manually. In this case, a mechanism for switching or rearranging the wheels 46R and 46L between the state shown in FIG. 1 and the state shown in FIG. 3 without using the two roll shaft joints 42R and 42L may be employed.

  Furthermore, the degrees of freedom of the embodiments other than the toes and their specific configurations are merely examples, and do not necessarily have 22 degrees of freedom, and can be arbitrarily changed by the joint shaft motor.

FIG. 1 is an illustrative view showing a robot according to an embodiment of the present invention. FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing the electrical configuration of the embodiment of FIG. FIG. 3 is an illustrative view showing a state of each joint when the robot of FIG. 1 embodiment is operated as a wheel-type inverted pendulum robot.

Explanation of symbols

10 ... Robot (Humanoid)
12, 14 ... Recumbent 22R, 22L ... Arms 24R, 24L, 30R, 30L, 34R, 34L, 42R, 42L ... Roll axis joints 28R, 28L ... Finite yaw axis joints 44R, 44L ... Infinite yaw axis joints 48 ... CPU
54 ... Motor control board 62R ... Right foot roll axis joint 62L ... Left foot roll axis joint 64R ... Right foot yaw axis joint 64L ... Left foot yaw axis joint

Claims (2)

In a humanoid robot that can walk on two legs with the left and right legs provided below the torso,
A humanoid robot characterized in that a wheel is attached to the tip of each foot by an infinite rotation yaw axis joint, and a mechanism for switching the infinite rotation yaw axis joint between an upright state and a bent state of 90 degrees is provided.   The humanoid robot according to claim 1, wherein the mechanism includes a roll shaft joint.

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