Team VALOR's ESCHER: A Novel Electromechanical Biped for the DARPA Robotics Challenge

The Electric Series Compliant Humanoid for Emergency Response (ESCHER) platform represents the culmination of four years of development at Virginia Tech to produce a full‐sized force‐controlled humanoid robot capable of operating in unstructured environments. ESCHER's locomotion capability was...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Journal of field robotics Vol. 34; no. 5; pp. 912 - 939
Main Authors:	Knabe, Coleman, Griffin, Robert, Burton, James, Cantor‐Cooke, Graham, Dantanarayana, Lakshitha, Day, Graham, Ebeling‐Koning, Oliver, Hahn, Eric, Hopkins, Michael, Neal, Jordan, Newton, Jackson, Nogales, Chris, Orekhov, Viktor, Peterson, John, Rouleau, Michael, Seminatore, John, Sung, Yoonchang, Webb, Jacob, Wittenstein, Nikolaus, Ziglar, Jason, Leonessa, Alexander, Lattimer, Brian, Furukawa, Tomonari
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	Hoboken Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 01-08-2017
Subjects:	Actuators Competition Control systems Dirt Emergency preparedness Emergency response Empirical analysis Humanoid Locomotion Modulus of elasticity Packages Robotics Robots Source code Terrain
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Summary:	The Electric Series Compliant Humanoid for Emergency Response (ESCHER) platform represents the culmination of four years of development at Virginia Tech to produce a full‐sized force‐controlled humanoid robot capable of operating in unstructured environments. ESCHER's locomotion capability was demonstrated at the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) Finals when it successfully navigated the 61 m loose dirt course. Team VALOR, a Track A team, developed ESCHER leveraging and improving upon bipedal humanoid technologies implemented in previous research efforts, specifically for traversing uneven terrain and sustained untethered operation. This paper presents the hardware platform, software, and control systems developed to field ESCHER at the DRC Finals. ESCHER's unique features include custom linear series elastic actuators in both single and dual actuator configurations and a whole‐body control framework supporting compliant locomotion across variable and shifting terrain. A high‐level software system designed using the robot operating system integrated various open‐source packages and interfaced with the existing whole‐body motion controller. The paper discusses a detailed analysis of challenges encountered during the competition, along with lessons learned that are critical for transitioning research contributions to a fielded robot. Empirical data collected before, during, and after the DRC Finals validate ESCHER's performance in fielded environments.
Bibliography:	Currently at Jensen Hughes, Blacksburg, VA. This work was performed while with the Terrestrial Robotics Engineering, and Controls (TREC) Lab at Virginia Tech This manuscript was originally submitted for the special issue on the DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals. This material is based upon work supported by (while serving at) the National Science Foundation.
ISSN:	1556-4959 1556-4967
DOI:	10.1002/rob.21697