Logo
ScienceStack
Table of Contents
Fetching ...
Sign In

Humanoid Robot RHP Friends: Seamless Combination of Autonomous and Teleoperated Tasks in a Nursing Context

Mehdi Benallegue, Guillaume Lorthioir, Antonin Dallard, Rafael Cisneros-Limón, Iori Kumagai, Mitsuharu Morisawa, Hiroshi Kaminaga, Masaki Murooka, Antoine Andre, Pierre Gergondet, Kenji Kaneko, Guillaume Caron, Fumio Kanehiro, Abderrahmane Kheddar, Soh Yukizaki, Junichi Karasuyama, Junichi Murakami, Masayuki Kamon

TL;DR

This work tackles the nursing care labor shortage by introducing RHP Friends, a humanoid robot that blends autonomous locomanipulation, multi-contact locomotion, and teleoperation to perform routine tasks like transfer and non-routine tasks such as circuit-breaker operation. The authors present an integrated hardware-software stack across four PCs using mc_rtc for control, perception-based bed tracking, offline/online multi-contact planning, and a teleoperation interface via HMD and body trackers. They validate the system with live demonstrations at IREX 2023, showing rapid switching between autonomous and teleoperated modes and safe handling of loaded devices. The results illustrate the feasibility of deploying humanoid robots in real nursing facilities while highlighting opportunities to improve interface usability, speed, and robustness through shared control and whole-body MPC approaches.

Abstract

This paper describes RHP Friends, a social humanoid robot developed to enable assistive robotic deployments in human-coexisting environments. As a use-case application, we present its potential use in nursing by extending its capabilities to operate human devices and tools according to the task and by enabling remote assistance operations. To meet a wide variety of tasks and situations in environments designed by and for humans, we developed a system that seamlessly integrates the slim and lightweight robot and several technologies: locomanipulation, multi-contact motion, teleoperation, and object detection and tracking. We demonstrated the system's usage in a nursing application. The robot efficiently performed the daily task of patient transfer and a non-routine task, represented by a request to operate a circuit breaker. This demonstration, held at the 2023 International Robot Exhibition (IREX), conducted three times a day over three days.

Humanoid Robot RHP Friends: Seamless Combination of Autonomous and Teleoperated Tasks in a Nursing Context

TL;DR

This work tackles the nursing care labor shortage by introducing RHP Friends, a humanoid robot that blends autonomous locomanipulation, multi-contact locomotion, and teleoperation to perform routine tasks like transfer and non-routine tasks such as circuit-breaker operation. The authors present an integrated hardware-software stack across four PCs using mc_rtc for control, perception-based bed tracking, offline/online multi-contact planning, and a teleoperation interface via HMD and body trackers. They validate the system with live demonstrations at IREX 2023, showing rapid switching between autonomous and teleoperated modes and safe handling of loaded devices. The results illustrate the feasibility of deploying humanoid robots in real nursing facilities while highlighting opportunities to improve interface usability, speed, and robustness through shared control and whole-body MPC approaches.

Abstract

This paper describes RHP Friends, a social humanoid robot developed to enable assistive robotic deployments in human-coexisting environments. As a use-case application, we present its potential use in nursing by extending its capabilities to operate human devices and tools according to the task and by enabling remote assistance operations. To meet a wide variety of tasks and situations in environments designed by and for humans, we developed a system that seamlessly integrates the slim and lightweight robot and several technologies: locomanipulation, multi-contact motion, teleoperation, and object detection and tracking. We demonstrated the system's usage in a nursing application. The robot efficiently performed the daily task of patient transfer and a non-routine task, represented by a request to operate a circuit breaker. This demonstration, held at the 2023 International Robot Exhibition (IREX), conducted three times a day over three days.
Paper Structure (23 sections, 10 figures)

This paper contains 23 sections, 10 figures.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Contributions
  3. RHP Friends and its enhancements
  4. Humanoid robot RHP Friends
  5. Enhancements
  6. Software system overview
  7. Locomanipulation
  8. Perception-aided object maneuvering
  9. Limitation of grasping posture
  10. Footstep generation from desired waypoints
  11. Position adjustment via perception
  12. Stabilization for loco-manipulation
  13. Object detection/tracking
  14. Multi-contact planning and control
  15. Offline multi-contact motion planning
  16. ...and 8 more sections

Figures (10)

  • Figure 1: RHP Friends, a social humanoid robot is locomanipulating Fuji's Hug L1-01, a transfer support device.
  • Figure 2: (a) Kinematic configuration of the humanoid robot RHP Friends, (b) a Closed Linkage Mechanism Unit, (c) a Linear Actuator Unit, and (d) a Differential System
  • Figure 3: Electrical System of the RHP Friends humanoid robot.
  • Figure 4: The overall structure of the software architecture. The software components are distributed across four computers and communicate using ROS.
  • Figure 5: (a) Example of footstep generation. The left figure shows the maneuvering motion of the TSD in the dynamics simulator Choreonoid. The right figure shows a foot placement sequence generated from predefined waypoints. (b) Locomanipulation control system.
  • ...and 5 more figures