Shock mitigation and recovery motion for a falling small humanoid robots

Some robots such as humanoids are very unstable and have a high risk of fall over and hardware damage. Therefore, we have been working on various mechanisms to mitigate the impact of fall over by attaching to a small humanoid robot.

Shock minitagation by utillizing umbrella

When the humanoid robot falls, it opens a folding umbrella attached to its head to support itself and mitigate the impact. The robot detects and predicts the fall by a sensor, and opens the umbrella to mitigate the impact of fall over. After that, the robot selects a recovery action corresponding to own state, and finally closes the umbrella to return to the standing state. By utilizing a folding umbrella, we have been realized a reversible shock mitigation mechanism.

• Recovery corresponding to the states of fall over
• Closing the umbrella after recovery
• Recovery corresponding to fall over on walking

  

Shock minitagation by utillizing soft wheel

The soft wheels attached to humanoid’s shoulders mitigate the impact of a fall. The robot can mitigate the impact without the arms by the soft wheels attached their shoulders. Therefore, the robot can raise their arms to prevent the grasping object from hitting to the ground. When the robot falls over on uneven terrain, it rises up after moving to level ground on its wheels. In this way, the robot can avoid another fall on uneven terrain by passing such terrain with wheels.

• Recovery from fall over in a step
• Recovery from fall over in a slope
• Fall over during grasping object

  

Videos

Shock minitagation by utillizing umbrella

Recovery corresponding to the states of fall over

Closing the umbrella after recovery

Recovery corresponding to fall over on walking

Shock minitagation by utillizing soft wheel

Recovery from fall over in a step

Recovery from fall over on a slope

Fall over during grasping object

Research poster (in Japanese)

Related works

1. Tomoya Miura and Shunsuke Kudoh and Kohei Kimura. Transformable Wheeled Humanoid with Shoulder Wheels for Fall Impact Mitigation. 2025 JSME Conference on Robotics and Mechatronics (ROBOMECH2025). 2025. 1P1-H01

2. Taiki Masubuchi, Shunsuke Kudoh and Kohei Kimura. Shock Mitigation and Fall Recovery for Humanoid Robot Utilizing Opening and Closing Mechanism of a Folding Umbrella. Transactions of the Society of Instrument and Control Engineers. Vol.61 No.1 pp.32-45

3. Taiki Masubuchi, Shunsuke Kudoh, Kohei Kimura. Shock mitigation and recovery motion for a falling robot utilizing a folding umbrella. 24th SICE System Integration Division Annual Conference (SI2023). 2023. 3H2-03