The Task Matrix Framework for Platform-Independent Humanoid Programming

Programming humanoid robots is very difficult due to the significant demands imposed by managing balancing, locomotion, dynamics, and kinematic redundancy. Current research on humanoids tends to be dominated by these issues and generally focuses little on programming the robots to perform useful tasks. This paper discusses the task matrix, a framework that employs abstractions to allow roboticists to program humanoids at a high level and ignore the complex issues noted above. These abstractions also facilitate programming in a robot-independent manner, permitting software reuse. We examine the task matrix and show how it can be used to perform both simple and complex tasks on two simulated humanoid robots.