Human-Supervised Control of the ATLAS Humanoid Robot for Traversing Doors

Door traversal is generally a trivial task for human beings but particularly challenging for humanoid robots. This paper describes a holistic approach for a full-sized humanoid robot to traverse through a door in an outdoor semi-structured environment as specified by the requirements of the DARPA Robotics Challenge. Door traversal can be broken down into four sub-tasks; door detection, walk to the door, door opening, and walk through the door. These topics are covered in detail along with the approaches used for perception and motion planning. Results from lab tests and the DRC Finals are shown. The approach presented in this paper can be further extended to a wide range of door types and configurations.