Postural Primitives: Interactive Behavior for a Humanoid Robot Arm

Abstract

This paper describes the implementation of reflex action for the arm of the humanoid robot Cog [5]. A set of biologically inspired postural primitives are used to create the arm motion. The primitives are combined in different ways to achieve reaching with grasping and withdrawal reflexes, allowing the arm to interact safely with both objects and people. This paper describes the reflexes, the biological inspiration for the control, and includes data collected from the robot. 1 Introduction The humanoid robot Cog [5] is intended to explore its environment using its body. There are many possible ways for Cog's arms to perform this role, and this paper describes the first stage---reaching with reflexes. This allows the arm to move around safely and interact with objects and people. Specifically, the arm reaches from a rest position to a random target (this has recently been extended to targets in visual coordinates, Marjanovi'c at al. [18]). It will grasp---the arm stopping whenever som...