Advances in the Development of the Humanoid Service Robot HERMES

Abstract

The humanoid service robot HERMES, first introduced as a concept at the First International Field and Service Robotics Conference FSR’97 in Canberra, was actually built in the meantime. With its omnidirectional wheel base, body, head and two arms it has 18 degrees of freedom and resembles a human in height and shape. Its main exteroceptive sensor modality is stereo vision. A variety of proprioceptive sensors further enhances its perceptual abilities. HERMES is used as an experimental platform to advance research in human-friendly manmachine interaction, mobile manipulation, environmental exploration and navigation. To study autonomous human-like cooperative behavior a robot operating system has been developed that allows an easy implementation, coordination and execution of various skills leading to several goal-directed and elaborate robot behaviors. In addition, HERMES can be teleoperated in all its degrees of freedom, making it ideally suited for entertaining people with a variety of pre-programmed motion sequences. Experiences gained in the development of the robot and in initial experiments designed to allow an assessment of the overall system performance as well as implementation details will be reported.