Motivation
- developing key technologies
- for future robotic systems that service humans
- in extended working / living environments that
- are populated by humans
- are made for humans
- should not be modified in any way for the benefit of the robot
- intermediate goal:
- intelligent and versatile service robot
- for manipulation und transportation tasks
- in uncontrolled and changing environments
- ultimate goal:
- ‘plug-and-play’ personal robot
Typical Shortcomings of Today's Robots
- special solutions for specific problems
- difficult to adapt to modified tasks and environments
- locomotion and manipulation are not combined
- special purpose sensors (e.g., sonar, laser, radar) instead of generic ones (e.g., vision, touch, hearing)
- limited modes of human types of communication
- no situated reference frame between robot and user
- no safety concept
- every robot has its own system architecture
- inflexible software framework
Solution
- integrating the key technologies into a single self-contained and autonomous testbed:
- a humanoid robot
- that resembles a human
- in height and shape and
- sensory and motor skills
- built from standard components
- in a modular, flexible and extensible fashion
- putting it into personal service of non-experts
- testing it under real-world conditions
Improved characteristics of HERMES:
- 25 similar drive modules with compatible mechanical and electrical interfaces
- universal concept of modularity and flexibility
- omnidirectional wheelbase
- two arms with 6 DOF and a two-finger gripper each
- bendable body
- sensor head on a pan/tilt platform
- stereo vision as main sensing modality, with two independent DOF for each camera (pan/tilt)
- multimodal human-robot interface based on vision, touch and hearing (dialogues in natural language)
- additional safety sensors
- network of multiple C40 DSPs for information processing and robot control
- standardized command interfaces (CAN bus) for all 25 drive modules
Details:
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