CB: A Humanoid Research Platform for Exploring NeuroScience

Abstract

This paper presents a 50 degrees of freedom humanoid robot, CB - Computational Brain. CB is a humanoid robot created for exploring the underlying processing of the human brain while dealing with the real world. We place our investigations within real world contexts, as humans do. In so doing, we focus on utilising a system that is closer to human - in sensing, configuration and performance. The real-time network-based control architecture for the control of all 50 degrees of freedom will be presented. The controller provides full position/velocity/force sensing and control at 1 KHz, allowing us the flexibility in deriving various forms of control schemes. Three aspects of the system are highlighted in this paper: 1) physical power for walking; 2) full-body compliant control - physical interactions; 3) perception and control - visual ocularmotor responses.