Advancements in Humanoid Robots: A Comprehensive Review and Future Prospects

This paper provides a comprehensive review of the current status, advancements, and future prospects of humanoid robots, highlighting their significance in driving the evolution of next-generation industries. By analyzing various research endeavors and key technologies, encompassing ontology structure,control and decision-making, and perception and interaction, a holistic overview of the current state of humanoid robot research is presented. Furthermore, emerging challenges in the field are identified, emphasizing the necessity for a deeper understanding of biological motion mechanisms, improved structural design,enhanced material applications, advanced drive and control methods, and efficient energy utilization. The integration of bionics, brain-inspired intelligence, mechanics, and control is underscored as a promising direction for the development of advanced humanoid robotic systems. This paper serves as an invaluable resource, offering insightful guidance to researchers in the field,while contributing to the ongoing evolution and potential of humanoid robots across diverse domains.

Optimal sagittal gait with ZMP stability during complete walking cycle for humanoid robots

A parametric method to generate low energy gait for both single and double support phases with zero moment point（ZMP） stability is presented. The ZMP stability condition is expressed as a limit to the actuating torque of the support ankle, and the inverse dynamics of both walking phases is investigated. A parametric optimization method is implemented which approximates joint trajectories by cubic spline functions connected at uniformly distributed time knots and makes optimization parameters only involve finite discrete states describing key postures. Thus, the gait optimization is transformed into an ordinary constrained nonlinear programming problem. The effectiveness of the method is verified through numerical simulations conducted on the humanoid robot THBIP-I model.

Clock-turning gait synthesis for humanoid robots

Turning gait is a basic motion for humanoid robots. This paper presents a method for humanoid tuming, i.e. clock-turning. The objective of clock-turning is to change robot direction at a stationary spot. The clock-turning planning consists of four steps： ankle trajectory generation, hip trajectory generation, knee trajectory generation, and inverse kinematics calculation. Our proposed method is based on a typical humanoid structure with 12 DOFs （degrees of freedom）. The final output of clock-turning planning is 12 reference trajectories, which are used to control a humanoid robot with 12 DOFs. ZMP （zero moment point） is used as stability criterion for the planning. Simulation experiments are conducted to verify the effectiveness of our proposed clock-turuing method.

A novel compound biped locomotion algorithm for humanoid robots to realize biped walking

In this paper, a compound biped locomotion algorithm for a humanoid robot under development is presented. This paper is organized in two main parts. In the first part, it mainly focuses on the structural design for the humanoid. In the second part, the compound biped locomotion algorithm is presented based on the reference motion and reference Zero Moment Point （ZMP）. This novel algorithm includes calculation of the upper body motion and trajectory of the Center of Gravity （COG） of the robot. First, disturbances from the environment are eliminated by the compensational movement of the upper body; then based on the error between a reference ZMP and the real ZMP as well as the relation between ZMP and CoG, the CoG error is calculated, thus leading to the CoG trajectory. Then, the motion of the robot converges to its reference motion, generating stable biped walking. Because the calculation of upper body motion and trajectory of CoG both depend on the reference motion, they can work in parallel, thus providing double insurances against the robot＇s collapse. Finally, the algorithm is validated by different kinds of simulation experiments.

LARM PKM solutions for torso design in humanoid robots

Human-like torso features are essential in humanoid robots. In this paper problems for design and operation of solutions for a robotic torso are discussed by referring to experiences and designs that have been developed at Laboratory of Robotics and Mechatronics （LARM） in Cassino, Italy. A new solution is presented with conceptual views as waist-trunk structure that makes a proper partition of the performance for walking and arm operations as sustained by a torso.

Classification of Sitting States for the Humanoid Robot SJTU-HR1

The classification of sitting issues is investigated since detailed state classification for humanoid robots plays a key role in the practical application of humanoid robots, particularly for the humanoid robots doing complicated tasks. This paper presents the concept, the characteristics tree, and the prototype of the humanoid robot SJTU-HR1. The basic states lbr humanoid robots are proposed, including lying, sitting, standing, and handstanding. Moreover, the sitting states are classified into several states from the viewpoint of topology. The Gy （generalized function） set theory is applied to achieve the kinematic characteristics of the interested end-effectors of the humanoid robot SJTU-HR1. Finally, the results indicate that a large number of the sitting states can be represented by the meaningful notations systematically. Furthermore, the one-to-one correspondence between the state and kinematic characteristics of the interested end-effectors of the SJTU-HR 1 leads to deeper insight into the capabilities of the humanoid robot SJTU-HR1.

Dynamically Adapt to Uneven Terrain Walking Control for Humanoid Robot

Dynamically adapt to uneven ground locomotion is a crucial ability for humanoid robots utilized in human environments.However,because of the effect of current pattern generation method,adapting to unknown rough ground is limited.Moreover,to maintain large support region by four-point contact during the landing phase is usually a key problem.In order to solve these problems,a landing phase control and online pattern generation in three dimensional environments is proposed.On the basis of robot-environment non-planar interactive modes,a method of landing control based on optimal support region is put forward to realize stable four-point contact by flexible foot,and a controller is employed to adapt to the changes of ground without using prior knowledge.Furthermore,an adaptable foothold planning is put forward to the online pattern generation considering walking speed,uneven terrain,and the effect of lateral movement to the locomotion stability.Finally,the effectiveness of landing control and online pattern generation is demonstrated by dynamic simulations and real robot walking experiments on outdoor uneven ground.The results indicate that the robot kept its balance even though the ground is unknown and irregular.The proposed methods lay a foundation for studies of humanoid robots performing tasks in complex environments.

Novel Flexible Foot System for Humanoid Robot Adaptable to Uneven Ground

Humanoid robots can walk stably on flat ground, regular slopes, and stairs. However, because of their rigid and flat soles, adapting to unknown rough terrains is limited, moreover, to maintain large scale four-point contact for foot structures to keep balance is usually a key technical problem. In order to solve these problems, the control strategy and foot structures should be improved. In this paper, a novel flexible foot system is proposed. This system occupies 8 degrees of freedom （DOF）, and can obtain larger support region to keep in four-point contact with uneven terrains; Novel cable transmission technology is put forward to reduce complexity of traditional mechanism and control strategy, and variation of each DOF is mapped to cable displacement. Furthermore, kinematics of this new system and a global dynamic model based on contact-force feedback are analyzed. According to stability criterion and feedback sensor information, a method calculating the optimal attitude matrix of contact points and joint variables is introduced. Virtual prototyping models of a 30-DOF humanoid robot and rough terrain are established to simulate humanoid robot walking on uneven ground, and feasibility of this system adapted to uneven terrain and validity of its control strategy are verified. The proposed research enhances the capability of humanoid robots to adapt to large scale uneven ground, expands the application field of humanoid robots, and thus lays a foundation for studies of humanoid robots performing tasks in complex environments in place of humans.

Design and Kinematic Analysis of a Novel Humanoid Robot Eye Using Pneumatic Artificial Muscles

This paper proposed a novel humanoid robot eye, which is driven by six Pneumatic Artificial Muscles （PAMs） and rotates with 3 Degree of Freedom （DOF）. The design of the mechanism and motion type of the robot eye are inspired by that of human eyes. The model of humanoid robot eye is established as a parallel mechanism, and the inverse-kinematic problem of this flexible tendons driving parallel system is solved by the analytical geometry method. As an extension, the simulation result for saccadic movement is presented under three conditions. The design and kinematic analysis of the prototype could be a sig- nificant step towards the goal of building an autonomous humanoid robot eye with the movement and especially the visual functions similar to that of human.

Cyber-Physical-Social System Between a Humanoid Robot and a Virtual Human Through a Shared Platform for Adaptive Agent Ecology

Two artificial agents(a humanoid robot and a virtual human) are enriched with various similar intelligence,autonomy, functionalities and interaction modalities. The agents are integrated in the form of a cyber-physical-social system(CPSS) through a shared communication platform to create a social ecology. In the ecology, the agents collaborate(assist each other) to perform a real-world task(search for a hidden object)for the benefits of humans. A robot-virtual human bilateral trust model is derived and a real-time trust measurement method is developed. The role of taking initiative in the collaboration is switched between the agents following a finite state machine model triggered by bilateral trust, which results in a mixedinitiative collaboration. A scheme is developed to evaluate the performance of the agents in the ecology through the CPSS.The results show that the robot and the virtual human perform satisfactorily in the collaboration through the CPSS. The results thus prove the effectiveness of the real-world ecology between artificial agents of heterogeneous realities through a shared platform based on trust-triggered mixed-initiatives. The results can help develop adaptive social ecology comprising intelligent agents of heterogeneous realities to assist humans in various tasks through collaboration between the agents in the form of a CPSS.

Motion Planning of Humanoid Robot for Obstacle Negotiation

The motion planning for obstacle negotiation by humanoid robot BHR-2 through stepping over or stepping on/off the wide and flat obstacle at known locations is presented. In the trajectory generation method, first the constraints of the foot motion parameters which include obstacle dimensions and the distance of obstacle from the humanoid robot is formulated. By varying the values of the constraint parameters, different types of foot motion for different obstacles can be produced. In this method, first the foot trajectory is generated, and then the waist trajectory is computed by using cubic spline interpolation without first calculating the zero moment point （ZMP） trajectory . The dynamic stability during the execution of stepping over and stepping on/off trajectories are ensured by incorporating the ZMP criterion. The effectiveness of the proposed method is confirmed by simulations and experiments on humanoid robot BHR-2.

Emotional Gait Generation for a Humanoid Robot

In this paper, an emotional mathematical model and affective state probability description space of a humanoid robot are set up on the basis of psycho-dynamics＇ psychological energy and affective energy conservation law. The emotional state transferring process and hidden Markov chain algorithm of stimulating transition process are then studied. The simulation results show that the mathematical model is applicable to the authentic affective state change rule of human beings. Finally, the gait generation experiment results of control signal and electric current tracking wave-form are presented to demonstrate the validity of the proposed mathematical model.

Resonance Suppression Strategy for Humanoid Robot Arm

To address the problem of resonance in the control of a robot arm,a resonance suppression strategy is proposed for a single-joint humanoid robot arm based on the proportionalresonant(PR)controller.First,an arm joint model of the humanoid robot is established.Then the influence of resonance frequency on the performance of the control system with the robot arm is analyzed.The voltage fluctuation of the drive motor caused by the changes in arm motion is recognized as the disturbance of the current loop.The PR controller has the characteristic of disturbance rejection at a specific frequency.The output fluctuation of the driving system caused by the change of arm motion state at the resonance frequency is suppressed.Therefore the output current of the inverter will not be affected by the vibration of the arm at the resonance frequency.Finally,the control system is verified by MATLAB/Simulink simulation.The simulation results demonstrate that the control strategy for the humanoid robot arm based on the PR controller can suppress the resonance of the arm effectively,improving the dynamic performance and system stability.

Plane extraction for navigation of humanoid robot

In order to make the humanoid robot walk freely in complicated circumstance, the reliable capabilities for obtaining plane information from its surroundings are demanded. A system for extracting planes from data taken by stereo vision was presented, After the depth image was obtained, the pixels of each line were scanned and split into straight line segments. The neighbouring relation of line segments was kept in link structure. The groups of three line segments were selected as seed regions. A queue was maintained for storing seed regions, and then the plane region was expanded around the seed region. The process of region growing continued until the queue of seed regions was empty. After trimming, the edges of the planes became smooth. In the end, extracted planes were obtained. In the experiment, two models were used： pipe and stairs. Two planes in pipe mode/and six planes in stairs model were extracted exactly. The speed and precision of algorithm can satisfy the demands of humanoid robot＇s navigation.

Kinematic analysis of a humanoid robot CHP-1 and selection of motors in consideration of cooperative motion

A lower-part humanoid robot CHP-1 with 12 degree-of-freedom of motion has been developed for cooperative motion,such as pushing or lifting an object.The capability of the robot is mainly dependent on the performance of the motors,thus the motors need to be properly selected.For the purpose,the kinematics of the robot was analyzed,and a number of simulations for two kinds of cooperative motions were carried out.The torques required at each motor of the robot under external forces were obtained.Here,the external forces were also estimated through simulation and literature survey.On the basis of the torques found,the selection of motors was finally suggested,and the motors are to be installed to the humanoid robot.

A selective attention-based contextual perception approach for a humanoid robot

A humanoid robot is always flooded by sensed information when sensing the environment, and it usually needs significant time to compute and process the sensed information. In this paper, a selective attention-based contextual perception approach was proposed for humanoid robots to sense the environment with high efficiency. First, the connotation of attention window （AW） is extended to make a more general and abstract definition of AW, and its four kinds of operations and state transformations are also discussed. Second, the attention control policies are described, which integrate intensionguided perceptual objects selection and distractor inhibition, and can deal with emergent issues. Distractor inhibition is used to filter unrelated information. Last, attention policies are viewed as the robot＇s perceptual modes, which can control and adjust the perception efficiency. The experimental results show that the presented approach can promote the perceptual efficiency significantly, and the perceptual cost can be effectively controlled through adopting different attention policies.

Humanoid Robot 3-D Motion Simulation for Hardware Realization

In this paper,three dimensions kinematics and kinetics simulation are discussed for hardware realization of a physical biped walking-chair robot.The direct and inverse close-form kinematics solution of the biped walking-chair robot is deduced.Several gaits are realized with the kinematics solution,including walking straight on level floor,going up stair,squatting down and standing up.Zero Moment Point(ZMP)equation is analyzed considering the movement of the crew.The simulated biped walking-chair robot is used for mechanical design,gaits development and validation before they are tested on real robot.

Similarity comprehensive evaluation of humanoid robot arm motion

A suitable comprehensive evaluation method for similarity comprehensive evaluation of humanoid motion(mainly to robotic arm) is proposed.For different robotic arms, a static comprehensive evaluation model is established by projection pursuit evaluation based on indexes of humanoid robot arm motion in robotics and ergonomics field. Based on projection pursuit evaluation with timing information entropy and time degrees, a dynamic comprehensive evaluation method is proposed by linear weighting to each time's static model's indexes weight according to timing weighted vectors. Through comparing similarity comprehensive evaluation result based on static and dynamic comprehensive evaluation model, the results show that similarity based on dynamic comprehensive evaluation model is high. By comparing reliability, similarity and dispersion of static and dynamic comprehensive evaluation models, the results show that dynamic comprehensive evaluation result has better accuracy, stability and lower dispersion, and the result is more reasonable and real. Therefore, the dynamic comprehensive evaluation method proposed in this paper is more suitable for similarity comprehensive evaluation of humanoid robot arm motion.

Main Stages of Evolution from Mechanical Automatic Systems to Humanoid Robot

Since ancient times, man has been concerned to create an artificial structure similar to itself. This concern has remained constant attention and creative thinkers most profound since antiquity until today, it is of greatest interest. This article aims to highlight the most significant moments of the evolution from mechanical creatures mythical or real, from antiquity to the present humanoid robots. There are thus shown the most significant variants humanoid imagined or realized since Talos, described in Greek mythology, continuing with mechanical machines during late Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire and then the Renaissance of the post-renaissance, then they are shown the main achievements of the industrialization period from the nineteenth to the early part of the twentieth century, then to the most important made in the last decades of the twentieth century and early twenty-first century. The work is important to stimulate concerns academic theorists and practice but also in the industrial practice specializing in robotics and more generally in mechatronics. It also opens the prospect of defining the concept of an artificial humanoid useful both for human prosthesis with certain disabilities, and a humanoid robot performance.

Stability Control and Simulation Experiments of Biped Humanoid Robot Walking on Rough Terrains

In this paper, we provide several methods to solve the problem of humanoid robot walking on rough terrains. By using the Passive Inverted Pendulum Model（PIPM） and predictive control, with some optimizing strategy added, we realized the smooth walking on a slope with rocks on it.