Manus - Humanoid

FIRA World Champion (2003, 2005 and 2006)

Champion - Singapore Robotic Games (2004)

Dr. Prahlad Vadakkepat

Legged locomotion is a particularly intriguing challenge in robotics. Legged robots have distinct advantages over their wheeled counterparts when working in arbitrarily complex terrains: they can generally cross obstacles more easily and exhibit greater adaptability. These features are important in several applications such as exploration, maintenance, intervention and service, all of which are beyond the realm of traditional manufacturing robots. Bipeds are especially interesting because humans are two-legged and places meant to be occupied by humans (such as homes and offices) are designed for two legged locomotion. If machines are to become more commonplace phenomena in our lives (which clearly is the trend), the technology of two-legged robotic locomotion in arbitrary environments must be mastered thoroughly.

With a height of 46 cm and a weight of only 2 kg, the Manus is small in size but it has a sophisticated overall mechanical structure. Manus has 17 degrees of freedom (DOF); there are 17 joints powered by motors which must be controlled simultaneously for the robot to even stand up (if un-powered, the structure simply crumples into a heap just like how a bicycle chain would). In order to realize a natural gait, the joint design of the robot is modeled on the structure of the human body, with each 6-DOF leg enabling the robot to imitate most of the human walking motions. The robot senses its environment through a combination of eight force sensors, one tilt sensor, an IR sensor, a digital compass and a video camera. To coordinate its sensory information and walking, the robot uses a two-layered control system. The high-level control layer gathers and processes the information from the sensors, decides on the necessary walking motions and directions, and sends commands to the low-level controller. The low-level control then processes inputs from the tilt and force sensors, and realizes the walking motions and any special motions such as kicking a ball.

Research Scholars: Mr. Zhang Ruixiang (MEng), Mr. Dip Goswami (PhD)