Les
robots ne sont pas toujours ceux que l'on croit ou ceux qu'ils croient
être.
Rhoban
Project is a group mixing academic researchers, artists and others
people
interested
in designing
robotic original creatures, especially autonomous robots, legged
robots.
The project has two academic research counter-parts:
The next generation of our
humanoid
robot
shall be exposed in the International
Exhibition
in Yeosu - 2012 - Korea (8 millions
of visitors expected, from more than 100 countries...)
Acroban appeared at FET'2011
(The European Future Technologies Conference and Exhibition, 4-6 may
2011)
Acroban
and friends
Acroban
is a humanoid robot designed by Rhoban Project in collaboration with
Flowers team.
Look at it here
(featuring Pierre Ly, thanks to him !).
With this
platform, we investigate several questions:
What
are the advantage of the vertebral
column
regarding locomotion ?
The
use of compliance
and semi-passive
dynamics for biped
locomotion.
Exploring robust,
intuitive and emergent physical human-robot interaction with the
humanoid robot Acroban
with Pierre-Yves Oudeyer and Pierre Rouanet.
To appear in 11th IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoid'2011)
-
2011 (Bled)
Maturational
constraints for
motor learning in high-dimensions: the case of biped walking
with Matthieu Lapeyre and Pierre-Yves Oudeyer.
To appear in 11th IEEE-RAS
International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoid'2011)
-
2011 (Bled)
Bio-Inspired
Vertebral
Column, Compliance and Semi-Passive Dynamics in a Lightweight Humanoid
Robot with
Matthieu
Lapeyre and Pierre-Yves Oudeyer
To appear in proc. of
IEEE/RSJ International Conference on
Intelligent
Robots and Systems (IROS'2011)
- 2011 (San Francisco) (also
selected for
IROS'2011
Special Demonstration Symposium)
Modeling
Maturational Constrains for
Learning Biped Humanoid Locomotion with
Matthieu Lapeyre and Pierre-Yves
Oudeyer
To appear in Proc of Int. Conf. on Development and Learning (ICDL)
- Poster session - IEEE 2011 (Frankfurt)
Acroban
the Humanoid: Compliance for Stabilization and Human Interaction.
O. Ly and P.-Y. Oudeyer.
In IEEE/RSJ Int. Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems
(IROS'2010)
– Video
Session (Taipei 2010).
Acroban
the Humanoid: Playful and Compliant Physical Child-Robot Interaction.
O.
Ly and P.-Y. Oudeyer.
In ACM
SIGGRAPH'2010 Emerging
Technologies (Los Angeles 2010)
Rhoban
is actually the first robot designed by the group.
This is a humanoid robot able to walk, get
up, go
upstairs ... and even dance
!
Look at him here.
The robot has been designed from
scratch, it is fully
autonomous.
Would you think about designing a car without suspensions ?... And so
why not in an humanoid robot ? We actually think about compliance at
each level of robot design. Here we
explore the use of compliance in mechanics by using suspensions.
Look at the first experiments.
Designing motions
Designing motions, or making the
robot learn new motor primitives
under the supervision of a user is
also a hot question for us.
Here are the first experiments where Hugo shows to Sigmaban a new motor
primitive called Too-Too-You-Too.
Control
System
We use our own control
system including embedded electronic and sofware, together with a
complete workbench for motion design.
Wheeled robots
We also like wheeled robots :-) More classical of course, but so
interesting !
We designed some of them in order to investigate localization and
automatic cartography. Here is a test of our generic platform involving
compass control.
Press
Release
(not exhaustive)
Engadget:
"We see a lot of robots around here. But few can evoke emotion without
resorting to a doe-eyed visage or plush, Dough-Boy bodice. That's what
makes Acroban so interesting. Dispensing with the cheap parlor tricks,
Acroban still comes across as child-like, playful, seemingly dependent
upon your care and guidance."
Plastic
Pals:
"Acroban is an exciting example of what is possible using commonly
available parts and a lot of ingenuity [...] Uncommon among most
humanoid robots, its spine has 5 joints alone, as well as springs and
elastics, which help to dampen the effects of unexpected external bumps
and knocks [...] It successfully shrugs off bumps from a ball thrown at
its upper body that would turf most of the RoboCup Humanoid league."
Wired
Gadget Lab: "The Acroban robot
is no Marvin, the Paranoid Android.
Instead, Acroban promises a sunny personality that's just right for
kids. [...]. The most interesting part of the robot is how well it
reacts to situations that would seem almost normal in a human context.
For instance, when the robot is walking, a person can hold the robot
arm and drive it in any direction easily. It's like steering children
who are just learning to walk, says the researchers. All of this is
done without providing the robot with any sort of verbal command."
