Jumping motion experiments on a NAO robot with elastic devices

Abstract

This paper describes a realization method of jumping on a humanoid robot with elastic devices. The purpose of this research is to enable a low-power humanoid robot to jump by utilizing elasticity. We have designed elastic devices for jumping with consideration of performance of the robot's actuators. The humanoid robot can store elastic energy in the spring by vibrating the spring with resonance frequency. Finally, the low-power humanoid robot could have temporarily higher energy than a humanoid robot which doesn't have the elastic devices. We have achieved jumping on NAO.