When joggers meet robots: the past, present, and future of research on humanoid robots

Abstract

Spawned by fast-paced progress in new materials and integrate circuit technology, the past two decades have witnessed tremendous development of humanoid robots for both scientific and commercial purposes, e.g. emergency response and daily life assistant. At the root of this trend are the increasing research interests and cooperation opportunities across different laboratories and countries. The application-driven requirements of high effectiveness and reliability of humanoid robots led intensive research and development in humanoid locomotion and control theories. In spite of the progress in the area, challenges such as unnatural locomotion control, inefficient multi-motion planning, and relatively slow disturbances recovery set further requirements for the next generation of humanoid robots. Therefore, the purpose of this work is to review the current development of highly representative bipedal humanoid robots and discuss the potential to move the ideas and models forward from laboratory settings into the real world. To this end, we also review the current clinical understanding of the walking and running dynamics to make the robot more human-like. © 2019, Zhejiang University Press.