Humanoid robot having fall-management capabilities, and method for managing said falls

摘要

The invention relates to a humanoid robot endowed with particular capabilities for managing falls. The risks of falling limit the development of the mass-market use of humanoid robots. In the prior art, the modalities for detecting falls are not well suited to the case of very dynamic robots since the center of mass is very often outside their support polygons. The modalities for managing falls are also poorly suited to robots which must be economical in their computation resources. According to the invention, the conventional support polygon is supplemented with effectors for which it is determined that they are sufficiently close to the ground. Protection strategies are implemented, chosen from a set of strategies defined by a classification of the angles of fall.

主权项

1. A humanoid robot configured to move on a surface comprising:
a first sensing capability configured to detect a contact of at least one first extremity of the robot with said surface, a first processing capability configured to compute a position of a point of projection of a center of mass of said robot with respect to a first support polygon comprising said one first extremity, and a second processing capability configured to determine a proximity of at least one second extremity of said robot with said surface, wherein at an output of the first processing capability configured to compute the position of the point of projection of the center of mass of said robot with respect to a support polygon, a module for monitoring and initiating a group of actions for protecting against falls, at least one of said actions being triggered when the first processing capability provides at least one output characteristic of a fall state of the robot in which the point of the projection of the center of mass of the robot is outside a second support polygon, and wherein said first processing capability is further configured to compute a position of the projection of the center of mass of said robot with respect to the second support polygon, said second polygon being deduced from the first polygon by adding to the latter points of projection on said surface of said second at least one extremity of said robot belonging to a group of extremities of said robot detected at a height less than threshold h0 with said surface, at a computing cycle when the point of projection of the center of mass with respect to the first polygon is computed, the threshold h0 being higher than zero, wherein an output of said computation by the first processing capability is used to trigger a fall detection if the projection of the center of mass does not fall within the first support polygon and does not fall within the second support polygon.