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Bipedal locomotion makes humanoid robots inherently prone to falls, causing catastrophic damage to the expensive sensors, actuators, and structural components of full-scale robots. To address this critical barrier to real-world deployment,…

This paper presents a study on the use of the Talos humanoid robot for performing assistive sit-to-stand or stand-to-sit tasks. In such tasks, the human exerts a large amount of force (100--200 N) within a very short time (2--8 s), posing…

Humanoid robots have received significant research interests and advancements in recent years. Despite many successes, due to their morphology, dynamics and limitation of control policy, humanoid robots are prone to fall as compared to…

Falling is an inherent risk of humanoid mobility. Maintaining stability is thus a primary safety focus in robot control and learning, yet no existing approach fully averts loss of balance. When instability does occur, prior work addresses…

With robots leaving factories and entering less controlled domains, possibly sharing the space with humans, safety is paramount and multimodal awareness of the body surface and the surrounding environment is fundamental. Taking inspiration…

The ability to recover from an unexpected external perturbation is a fundamental motor skill in bipedal locomotion. An effective response includes the ability to not just recover balance and maintain stability but also to fall in a safe…

Automatic fall recovery is a crucial prerequisite before humanoid robots can be reliably deployed. Hand-designing controllers for getting up is difficult because of the varied configurations a humanoid can end up in after a fall and the…

Humanoid robots are envisioned as general-purpose platforms in human-centered environments, yet their deployment is limited by vulnerability to falls and the risks posed by rigid metal-plastic structures to people and surroundings. We…

Despite recent advances in robust locomotion, bipedal robots operating in the real world remain at risk of falling. While most research focuses on preventing such events, we instead concentrate on the phenomenon of falling itself.…

Robots can influence people to accomplish their tasks more efficiently: autonomous cars can inch forward at an intersection to pass through, and tabletop manipulators can go for an object on the table first. However, a robot's ability to…

Adaptive falling and recovery skills greatly extend the applicability of robot deployments. In the case of legged mobile manipulators, the robot arm could adaptively stop the fall and assist the recovery. Prior works on falling and recovery…

Collision-free motion is often aided by tactile and proximity sensors distributed on the body of the robot due to their resistance to occlusion as opposed to external cameras. However, how to shape the sensor's properties, such as sensing…

Humanoid robots maintain balance and navigate by controlling the contact wrenches applied to the environment. While it is possible to plan dynamically-feasible motion that applies appropriate wrenches using existing methods, a humanoid may…

In this article, we propose a deep learning framework that provides a unified approach to the problem of leg contact detection in humanoid robot walking gaits. Our formulation accomplishes to accurately and robustly estimate the contact…

With the advent of artificial intelligence and machine learning, humanoid robots are made to learn a variety of skills which humans possess. One of fundamental skills which humans use in day-to-day activities is performing tasks with…

Previous humanoid robot research works treat the robot as a bipedal mobile manipulation platform, where only the feet and hands contact the environment. However, we humans use all body parts to interact with the world, e.g., we sit in…

Direct physical interaction with robots is becoming increasingly important in flexible production scenarios, but robots without protective fences also pose a greater risk to the operator. In order to keep the risk potential low, relatively…

Designing control policies for legged locomotion is complex due to the under-actuated and non-continuous robot dynamics. Model-free reinforcement learning provides promising tools to tackle this challenge. However, a major bottleneck of…

One of the first and foremost non-verbal interactions that humans perform is a handshake. It has an impact on first impressions as touch can convey complex emotions. This makes handshaking an important skill for the repertoire of a social…

Humanoid robots are machines built with an anthropomorphic shape. Despite decades of research into the subject, it is still challenging to tackle the robot locomotion problem from an algorithmic point of view. For example, these machines…