A Standardized Benchmark for Humanoid Whole-Body Manipulation

• Published in: 2022 IEEE-RAS 21st International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids) pp. 608 - 615
• Main Authors: Thibault, William, Chavez, Francisco Javier Andrade, Mombaur, Katja
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 28-11-2022
• Subjects: Benchmark testing; Humanoid robots; Key performance indicator; Protocols; Task analysis
• ISSN: 2164-0580
• DOI: 10.1109/Humanoids53995.2022.10000141

In this paper we focus on the evaluation of humanoid manipulation skills while balancing on two feet. This involves manipulation while standing and loco-manipulation where the object is being manipulated while taking steps. With this objective in mind, an initial study of whole-body manipulation in a box manipulation scenario with two dif-ferent motions using the University of Waterloo's REEM-C, "Seven", is investigated to provide insight into a valuable setup, comprehensive test protocols and useful performance metrics based on real world data. The contribution of this paper is a proposed benchmark for whole-body manipulation consisting of the design of a test bed inspired by real use cases for humanoid whole-body manipulation tasks, the definition of a set of protocols to standardize the testing procedure and insightful key performance indicators (KPIs) based on this initial study with the real robot. The proposed benchmark for humanoid whole-body manipulation is part of the EUROBENCH project that aims at creating a benchmarking framework for robotic systems performing locomotion related tasks.