PAOLO FERRARI

Dottore di ricerca

ciclo: XXXIII


supervisore: Giuseppe Oriolo

Titolo della tesi: Motion Planning Techniques for Humanoid Robots

Thanks to their human-like structure, humanoid robots have the potential for accomplishing complex tasks requiring legged locomotion and/or dual-arm manipulation in both structured and unstructured environments. To successfully fulfil such tasks, appropriate humanoid motions must be generated. Planning these motions is particularly challenging for humanoid robots because of their peculiar characteristics. First, their high number of degrees of freedom makes planning computationally expensive. Second, they can displace their base only through stepping or acyclic multi-contact motions. Third, they must maintain balance at all times. This thesis addresses the motion planning problem for humanoid robots in various contexts. We start by considering the general problem of planning whole-body motions for a humanoid robot that must execute a task implicitly requiring locomotion in an environment populated by static obstacles. For this problem we propose a complete framework that can incorporate tasks of different nature (i.e., navigation, reaching, manipulation and visual tasks) for planning both in case of known and unknown environments. One of the advantages of humanoids is the possibility of moving through complex environments by stepping over or onto obstacles. To this end, we propose an integrated method for planning and executing humanoid motions on uneven ground. It is composed by two modules: an offline footstep planner and an online gait generator. For the first module we propose two possible randomized strategies that can efficiently compute feasible and optimal footstep plans, respectively. In many practical applications, it might be allowed to abandon the task in favor of collision avoidance. For cases in which the robot is assigned a soft task of this type, we present an opportunistic strategy for planning motions that, differently from other approaches, allow the robot to perform the assigned task for as long as possible, and deviate from it only when strictly needed to avoid a collision. The method is first discussed with regard to a generic free-flying robot, and later extended to the case of humanoid robots. More complex tasks that a humanoid robot can potentially fulfil require to sequentially establish with the environment multiple contacts involving not only the feet as in basic biped locomotion. For this problem we propose a multi-contact motion planner that thanks to its randomized nature avoids any kind of precomputation or heuristics design that are usually required with existing search-based techniques. Finally, we consider the problem of safe coexistence between human and humanoids. In this context, reactive planning capabilities are essential. We describe a complete framework for the safe deployment of humanoid robots in environments containing humans, where several safety behaviors are activated and deactivated through a state machine according to information coming from the robot sensors.

Produzione scientifica

11573/1687502 - 2023 - Humanoid motion generation in a world of stairs
Cipriano, Michele; Ferrari, Paolo; Scianca, Nicola; Lanari, Leonardo; Oriolo, Giuseppe - 01a Articolo in rivista
rivista: ROBOTICS AND AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS (Elsevier BV:PO Box 211, 1000 AE Amsterdam Netherlands:011 31 20 4853757, 011 31 20 4853642, 011 31 20 4853641, EMAIL: nlinfo-f@elsevier.nl, INTERNET: http://www.elsevier.nl, Fax: 011 31 20 4853598) pp. - - issn: 0921-8890 - wos: WOS:001054804100001 (0) - scopus: 2-s2.0-85169906920 (1)

11573/1680455 - 2023 - Multi-contact planning and control for humanoid robots: Design and validation of a complete framework
Ferrari, Paolo; Rossini, Luca; Ruscelli, Francesco; Laurenzi, Arturo; Oriolo, Giuseppe; Tsagarakis, Nikos G.; Mingo Hoffman, Enrico - 01a Articolo in rivista
rivista: ROBOTICS AND AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS (Elsevier BV:PO Box 211, 1000 AE Amsterdam Netherlands:011 31 20 4853757, 011 31 20 4853642, 011 31 20 4853641, EMAIL: nlinfo-f@elsevier.nl, INTERNET: http://www.elsevier.nl, Fax: 011 31 20 4853598) pp. - - issn: 0921-8890 - wos: WOS:001008109100001 (0) - scopus: 2-s2.0-85159781873 (2)

11573/1680459 - 2022 - Safe Robot Navigation in a Crowd Combining NMPC and Control Barrier Functions
Vulcano, V.; Tarantos, S. G.; Ferrari, P.; Oriolo, G. - 04b Atto di convegno in volume
congresso: 61st IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, CDC 2022 (Cancun, Mexico)
libro: Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control - (978-1-6654-6761-2)

11573/1523804 - 2021 - A behavior-based framework for safe deployment of humanoid robots
Scianca, N.; Ferrari, P.; De Simone, D.; Lanari, L.; Oriolo, G. - 01a Articolo in rivista
rivista: AUTONOMOUS ROBOTS (-DORDRECHT, NETHERLANDS: SPRINGER VERLAG -Dordrecht ; Boston : Kluwer Academic Publishers) pp. 435-456 - issn: 0929-5593 - wos: WOS:000628732700001 (3) - scopus: 2-s2.0-85102551291 (4)

11573/1446246 - 2020 - An Opportunistic Strategy for Motion Planning in the Presence of Soft Task Constraints
Cefalo, M.; Ferrari, P.; Oriolo, G. - 01a Articolo in rivista
rivista: IEEE ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION LETTERS (USa, Piscataway, NJ: IEEE Robotics and Automation Society) pp. 6294-6301 - issn: 2377-3766 - wos: WOS:000559465700016 (5) - scopus: 2-s2.0-85089964078 (5)

11573/1387789 - 2019 - Sensor-based whole-body planning/replanning for humanoid robots
Ferrari, P.; Cognetti, M.; Oriolo, G. - 04b Atto di convegno in volume
congresso: 19th IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots, Humanoids 2019 (Toronto; Canada)
libro: 2019 IEEE-RAS 19th International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids) - (978-1-5386-7630-1)

11573/1325845 - 2019 - An integrated motion planner/controller for humanoid robots on uneven ground
Ferrari, P.; Scianca, N.; Lanari, L.; Oriolo, G. - 04b Atto di convegno in volume
congresso: 18th European Control Conference, ECC 2019 (Naples; Italy)
libro: 2019 18th European Control Conference (ECC 2019) - (978-3-907144-00-8)

11573/1225583 - 2018 - Anytime Whole-Body Planning/Replanning for Humanoid Robots
Ferrari, Paolo; Cognetti, Marco; Oriolo, Giuseppe - 04b Atto di convegno in volume
congresso: 18th IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots, Humanoids 2018 (Beijing; China)
libro: 2018 IEEE-RAS 18th International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids) - (978-1-5386-7283-9)

11573/1069234 - 2017 - MPC-based humanoid pursuit-evasion in the presence of obstacles
De Simone, Daniele; Scianca, Nicola; Ferrari, Paolo; Lanari, Leonardo; Oriolo, Giuseppe - 04b Atto di convegno in volume
congresso: 2017 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, IROS 2017 (Vancouver; Canada)
libro: 2017 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) - (9781538626825; 978-1-5386-2683-2)

11573/1023136 - 2017 - Humanoid whole-body planning for loco-manipulation tasks
Ferrari, Paolo; Cognetti, Marco; Oriolo, Giuseppe - 04b Atto di convegno in volume
congresso: 2017 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA 2017 (Singapore)
libro: 2017 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) - (9781509046331; 978-1-5090-4632-4)

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