Shock mitigation and recovery motion for a falling robot utilizing a folding umbrella

Some robots such as humanoids are very unstable and have a high risk of fall over and hardware damage. This study have been working on a mechanism to mitigate the impact of fall over by attaching a folding umbrella to a small humanoid robot.

The robot detects and predicts the fall by a sensor mounted on it, and opens the umbrella to mitigate the impact of fall over. After that, the robot classifies the own state, selects a recovery action corresponding to each state, and finally closes the umbrella to return to the standing state.

Videos

Recovery actions corresponding to the states of fall over

Closing the umbrella after recovery action

Recovery actions corresponding to fall over on walking

Research poster (in Japanese)

Related works

1. 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