TITLE: Design of an Autonomous Humanoid Robot

PRESENTER: Gordon Wyeth, Director, Robotics Laboratory

AFFILIATION: School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering University of Queensland, Australia.

DATE: Monday, 10th December 2001

TIME: 1:00pm - 2.00pm

PLACE: CSE K17 1st Floor Seminar Room

ABSTRACT:

The GuRoo project in the University of Queensland Robotics Laboratory aims to design and build a 1.2m tall robot with human proportions that is capable of balancing, walking, turning, crouching, and standing from a prostrate position. The target mass for the robot is 30 kg, including on-board power and computation, as well as active, colour vision with vision processing. The intended challenge task for the robot is to play a game of soccer with or against human players or other humanoid robots. To complete this challenge, the robot must be able to move freely on its two legs. It requires a vision sense that can detect the objects in a soccer game, such as the ball, the players from both teams, the goals and the boundaries. It must also be able to manipulate and kick a ball with its feet, and be robust enough to deal with challenges from other players. Clearly, the robot must operate in a completely autonomous fashion without support harnesses or wiring tethers. This talk describes the progress of the project including the mechanical and electronic design, and the walking and balancing systems developed on a high fidelity graphical simulator

BIOGRAPHY OF SPEAKER:

Gordon Wyeth is the Director of the Robotics Laboratory in the School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering at the University of Queensland, Australia. The lab's principle research is the development of robotic systems based on neuro-ethological data. This research is being applied in consumer robot applications and robot soccer. He was co-chair of the Australian Conference on Robotics and Automation held in Brisbane, Australia in 1999, and chair for the Small Size League in RoboCup 2000. He serves on the executives of the RoboCup Federation, RoboCup Junior Australia and the Australian Robotics and Automation Association

Seminar Convenor:

Bernhard Hengst
Tel: +61-2-9385-3988,
E-mail: bernhardh@cse.unsw.edu.au
School of Computer Science & Engineering, UNSW.