LOLA – a Performance Enhanced Humanoid Robot (LOLA – ein leistungsgesteigerter humanoider Roboter)

Abstract

Summary Humanoid robots are perfectly suited for service applications, since their human-like shape allows them to easily access environments designed for humans. This paper presents the performance enhanced humanoid robot LOLA. The goal of the project is to realize fast, human-like and vision-guided walking. LOLA's hardware is characterized by lightweight construction, modular, multi-sensory joint design with brushless motors and an electronics architecture using decentralized joint controllers. Real-time walking control is realized by a hierarchical trajectory generation and control system. Hardware and control are designed using a comprehensive multibody model of the robot. LOLA is equipped with a novel multi-focal vision system with four cameras and 6 degrees-of-freedom. Multifocal situation-specific gaze control provides high perception quality, flexible reaction, and accurate localization and navigation in large and weakly structured environments.