Getting Back on Two Feet: Reliable Standing-up Routines for a Humanoid Robot.

Abstract

To make bipedal locomotion robust, it is not sufficient to rely on postural responses that try to prevent falls, but it is also necessary to detect falls and to implement appropriate recovery procedures. This paper describes general methods for a humanoid robot to stand up from the prone and supine posture. We illustrate the use of these getting-up routines on the example of our robot Jupp. The proposed methods require only a limited number of degrees of freedom and observe common joint-angle limitations. We employed a physics-based robot simulation to analyze the kinematics and dynamics of getting up. The standing-up routines have been implemented on the real robot as well. Tests in our lab and at RoboCup 2005 showed that reliable standing-up is possible after a fall and that such recovery procedures greatly improve the overall robustness of bipedal locomotion.