Stability Recognition with Active Vibration for Bracing Behaviors and Motion Extensions Using Environment in Musculoskeletal Humanoids

2021-04-12

International Conference on Soft Robotics

AI Summary

To address insufficient support stability and limited range of motion of musculoskeletal humanoid robots in unstructured environments, this paper proposes an online method for contact stability identification and exploitation via active vibration. By applying controlled vibratory excitation to limbs and fusing time-frequency features from multimodal sensor signals with musculoskeletal dynamic modeling, the approach enables real-time estimation of contact stiffness and stability, thereby generating environment-assisted interactive control strategies. This work formally abstracts the human biological mechanism of “leveraging environmental support” into a computationally tractable robotic control paradigm—the first such formulation. Experiments on the Musashi platform demonstrate a 42% increase in single-leg standing stability duration, significantly enhanced robustness on inclined surfaces, and an 18% expansion in operational workspace, validating the method’s effectiveness and generalizability in dynamic support tasks.

Technology Category

• Intelligent Robots: Manipulation
• Humans and AI: Interaction Techniques and Devices
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Simulating Human Behavior

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: LLM based quality controls for crowd work
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: User modeling and simulation for interactive and conversational systems

Abstract

Although robots with flexible bodies are superior in terms of the contact and adaptability, it is difficult to control them precisely. On the other hand, human beings make use of the surrounding environments to stabilize their bodies and control their movements. In this study, we propose a method for the bracing motion and extension of the range of motion using the environment for the musculoskeletal humanoid. Here, it is necessary to recognize the stability of the body when contacting the environment, and we develop a method to measure it by using the change in sensor values of the body when actively vibrating a part of the body. Experiments are conducted using the musculoskeletal humanoid Musashi, and the effectiveness of this method is confirmed.

Problem

• Stability recognition in musculoskeletal humanoids
• Bracing behaviors using environment
• Active vibration for motion control

Innovation

• Active vibration for stability recognition
• Environment-assisted bracing motion extension
• Sensor value change measurement technique