Biorobotics Laboratory BioRob

Pascal Cominoli (Summer Semester Project 2004): Development of a physical simulation of a real humanoid robot

HOAP-2 (Humanoid for Open Architecture Platform)

HOAP-2 is a compact, light weight, and easy-to-treat genuine humanoid robot with two arms and two legs.HOAP-2's gesture expression has been enhanced from its first version HOAP-1 with moving head, waist, and hands. Using motor current control, except for his head and hands, the movements are much smoother. Its connection to a PC is really easy, so you can use it as a human robotics research tool for studying areas, such as movement control and communications with humans. It is only 50cm tall, weights less than 7kg, so it can be handled by a single person, what is a great advantage.

The goal of this semester project was first the development of a physical simulation of that hoap-2 robot which the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology just bought, and then the reproduction of movies that can be seen on the fujitsu web site, in order to see the appropriateness between the simulated model and the real robot.

I used the Webots software because it provides a rapid prototyping environment for modeling, programming and simulating mobile robots.