Interactive Programming of a Mechatronic System: A Small Humanoid Robot Example

This paper presents a small humanoid robot and a system for programming this robot by demonstration. The system uses the popular Kinect sensor to capture the motion of the operator and allows the small, low-cost robot to mimics full body motion in real time. The motion programming approach is based on extracting the angles in the observed operators joints (knees, elbows, etc.) and correcting them, in order to make them feasible for the considerably different kinematics of the humanoid robot. The system maintains also the balance of the robot and avoids self-collisions of its body parts. This system is simple but effective, allowing for a broad range of human operator behaviors.