Compliant Robot Motion Regulated via Proprioceptive Sensor Based Contact Observer

Abstract

In this paper, we present developments of a realtime compliant motion control for a personal humanoid robot. Our approach allows to interpret and react to human guidance through touch using only joint encoders measurements to monitor contact direction and intensity on both static and moving links. This novel method is developed with consideration of minimal sensor requirement of the hardware platform to meet high affordability criteria. We demonstrate performances in experiments with a humanoid robot Pepper.