Humanoid's dual arm object manipulation based on virtual dynamics model

In order to implement promising robot applications in our daily lives, robots need to perform manipulation tasks within the human environments. Especially for a humanoid robot, it is essential to manipulate a variety of objects with different shapes and sizes to assist humans in the human environments. This paper presents a method of manipulating objects with humanoid robot's dual arms. The robot is usually asked to control both the motion and force to manipulate the objects. We propose a novel concept of control method based on the virtual dynamics model (VDM), which enables the robot to perform both tasks of reaching to an object and grasping it under the uniform control system. Furthermore, the impedance model based on the VDM controller also enables the robot to safely grasp an object by reducing the impact at the contact point. The proposed algorithm is implemented on the humanoid robot, Mahru, with independent joint controller at each motor. Its performance is demonstrated by manipulating different types of objects.