In the past 20 years, there have been over 7 thousand natural disasters, totaling 1.23 million casualties and affecting 4.2 billion people. Often these disasters create hostile environments where human search-and-rescue missions are too dangerous. In these situations, humanoid robots can be used in place of human rescuers for a safer emergency response. This project aims to manufacture, design, and control the lower half of a self-balancing bipedal robot, named HURON. HURON will be able to react to forces anywhere on the body and move accordingly to regain balance and exhibit a human-like gait for walking. Using HURON for search and rescue eliminates the danger of sending search parties into high-risk environments, decreasing risk during disaster relief efforts. Therefore, this Major Qualifying Project started from scratch to develop the basis of a disaster relief humanoid robot which is comprised of three main systems: designing, sensing, and controlling. The main design constraint was that it would have human proportions without the need for a backpack. Additionally, since this robot would mimic a human, all components had to be designed such that a pair of pants could fit over the robot. In order to achieve this, research was done into the degrees of freedom (DOF) and proportions of human legs for 5’ 10” male. During the design process, a torque analysis and finite element analysis (FEA) were done and concluded that the robot had to be constructed out of a mixture between aluminum and steel components. In the end, the robot was made of over 130 manufactured components. In order to act, reason, and interact like humans, humanoids need to take input from the environment around them and react. This is done with sensors, as they take touch sensitivity inputs to understand the force transferred. To understand how balanced the humanoid robot is and how its weight is distributed, we implemented force sensors on the feet. With a combination of designing a circuit and applying the theory of foot force stability margin with the geometric and physical limitations of the robot, stability decisions were made. These decisions use the current stability state of the robot to determine how the robot must move in order to regain balance against external perturbations. Precise control of the hardware, based off inputs from the sensing circuits, is important for accurate control of the robot. Using the stability margins calculated from the force sensors in the feet as well as from the encoders in the motors, HURON can react to external forces. We yielded control of HURON using inverse kinematics based on the positions and angles of each of our joints. The outputs of our inverse kinematic equations returned specific positional poses, which were then converted to commands to the robot’s motors. Prior to testing on the physical robot, we opted for testing in two modes of simulations, Gazebo and MATLAB, to verify validity of our equations and feasibility. We then applied the techniques and equations used to the physical robot, allowing it to react to a push from behind and replicate human walking.

• This report represents the work of one or more WPI undergraduate students submitted to the faculty as evidence of completion of a degree requirement. WPI routinely publishes these reports on its website without editorial or peer review.

Creator

• Ruggeri, Angelo
• Dancy, Rachel
• Sang, Brendyn
• Staubi, Kyle
• Parikh, Rahil
• Gong, Jonathan
• Lee, Curtis
• Huneke, Cameron
• Hanscom, Aislin
• Lam, Peter
• Marcotte, John

Publisher

• Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Identifier

• 105576
• E-project-042623-193608

Advisor

• Nemitz, Markus
• Agheli Hajiabadi, Mohammad Mahdi
• Onal, Cagdas
• Michalson, William R.
• Troy, Karen
• Sanket, Nitin

Year

• 2023

Date created

• 2023-04-26

Resource type

• Major Qualifying Project

Major

• Biomedical Engineering
• Mechanical Engineering
• Computer Science
• Robotics Engineering
• Electrical & Computer Engineering

Source

• E-project-042623-193608

Rights statement

• In Copyright

Last modified

• 2023-06-21