Online footprint imitation of a humanoid robot by walking motion parameterization

There are many difficulties in operating a humanoid which has high degree-of-freedom and instability in balancing its body. In addition, due to the shape of a humanoid, it is expected to have motions like a human. In order to overcome its operational difficulties and to provide a humanlike motion, a teleoperation with the motion imitation is studied in this paper. Specifically, a framework for online generation of a footprint from a human walking motion is proposed. The human walking motions acquired from a motion capture device are parameterized and normalized to give a human independent foot motion. The normalized parameters are restored by a humanoid considering its hardware limit. The restored footprints generate a walking trajectory of a humanoid, which imitates the human walking motion in terms of the footprint. Experiments are conducted with MAHRU-R, a humanoid robot developed in KIST.