Cooperative humanoid stretcher manipulation and locomotion

In this paper and accompanying video, we demon strate a humanoid robotic system where two humanoids are physically constrained by the cooperative manipulation of a rigid stretcher body. The humanoids walk together as a virtual quadruped, showing how principles of quadruped gait generation can be applied to cooperating humanoids. In the experiments, two DARwIn-OP humanoid robots estimate the position and orientation of the stretcher, in order to approach it and pick it up. Once they are standing with the stretcher in their hands, they walk by synchronizing their gaits to simulate a virtual quadruped. By systemically tuning the underlying gait parameters, we show how the cooperative humanoids can carry the stretcher in the most stable fashion.