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About

Riku Shigematsu is a robotics researcher specializing in whole-body motion planning and force control for humanoid robots, with a focus on enabling them to perform physically demanding manipulation tasks. His major contributions lie in developing optimization-based methods that allow humanoid robots to handle heavy or unknown objects while maintaining balance and stability. In his most-cited work (2019, 11 citations), Shigematsu introduced a kinematics and statics optimization framework to generate key pose sequences for manipulating heavy objects, ensuring both balance constraints and joint torque limits are respected. His 2018 paper (11 citations) advanced this further by enabling humanoids to lift and carry objects of unknown mass properties and friction on their heads, overcoming visual occlusion and instability issues common with hand-held methods. Shigematsu also tackled tool-use tasks requiring large force exertion, such as soil digging (2019), by integrating center-of-mass movement with tool force adjustment. His research bridges the gap between theoretical motion planning and practical heavy-duty applications for humanoid robots, making him a notable contributor to the field of humanoid manipulation and whole-body control.