DRC Finals 2015

Overview

Team SNU (Seoul National University) is composed of three subgroups: Dynamic Robotic Systems Lab (DYROS Lab), Machine Intelligence & Pattern Analysis Lab (MIPAL Lab), and SimLab (private company). Team SNU uses THORMANG developed by ROBOTIS.

DYROS lab is in charge of control aspect of the robot and overall team management for DRC. The lab develops advanced intelligent robotic systems and their control algorithms so that they can interact with humans in our human environment. The main research areas are whole-body multi-contact control, robot–environment interaction, biomechanics, human motion analysis, compliant actuators, and robotic arts.http://dyros.snu.ac.kr

MIPAL works on perception part of the robot for Team SNU. MIPAL at Seoul National University studies a broad spectrum of subjects relevant to pattern recognition and machine learning using statistical analysis. MIPAL’s main area of interest includes object recognition, object detection, pattern classification, statistical data analysis, Image processing and Computer vision. http://mipal.snu.ac.kr

SimLab provides the software framework and interface to the robot for Team SNU. The company makes the complete software and hardware solutions for the robotics research, development, and educational communities. SimLab’s products include RoboticsLab™(robotic system modeling tools and real-time dynamics simulation SDK) and RealtimeRobotics™(real-time robot control SDK), as well as robot HW platforms: Allegro Dog/Arm/Hand™(quadruped, manipulator, and 16-DOF robotic hand).http://www.simlab.co.kr

Experimental Equipments

THORMANG

Height: 4ft 10in (1.47m)

Weight: 108lbs (49kg)

Wingspan: 77in (1.95m)

Position controlled actuactor, DYNAMICXEL

After finshing DRC Finals, we enhanced this robot's structure and changed the name as DYROS-JET .

Algorithms

Controller
- Analytic Inverse Kinematics (IK) Based Lower body controller
- Jacobian based upper body controller
- Impedance controller
- See also FIELD2017, HUMANOID2015, and IJIRS2016

Experimental Results

Results at the DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals 2015

We obtained 4 points for 58 min and our team finished in 12th place out of 23 teams. We used up most of the performance time for walking, because the DSP time during walking was greatly increased due to the uneven ground surface in the stadium.

However, the manipulating time 15 for the driving, th door, the valve, and the wall were 00:01:26 (5th), 00:18:16 (19th), 00:01:01 (3rd), and 00:06:40 (1st), respectively. Also, Team SNU’s robot successfully finished the final without falling, while the bipedal robots used by many of the other teams fell down on the ground.

Our team placed in the top rank of 4 teams who used the THORMANG platform despite the lack of developing time.