video: The WALK-MAN robot was designed and implemented by IIT-Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia within the project WALK-MAN funded by the European Commission. The robot WALK-MAN dealt with a scenario representing an industrial plant damaged by an earthquake and where gas leaks and fire are present, thus a dangerous situation for humans. The scenario was recreated in IIT laboratories, where the robot was able to navigate through a damaged room and perform four specific tasks: opening and traversing the door to enter the zone; locating the valve which control the gas leakage and close it; removing debris on its path; and finally identifying the fire and activating a fire extinguisher. The robot is controlled by a human operator remotely through a virtual interface and a sensorized suit, which permits to operate the robot very naturally, controlling effectively its manipulation and locomotion, like an avatar. view more
Credit: IIT-Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia
Researchers at IIT-Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia successfully tested a new version of WALK-MAN humanoid robot for supporting emergency response teams also in fire incidents. The robot is able to locate the fire position and walk towards it, and then activate an extinguisher to eliminate the fire. During the operation, it collects images and transmits these back to emergency teams, who can evaluate the situation and guide the robot remotely. The new version of WALK-MAN robot has a new design, made of a lighter upper body and new hands, in order to reduce construction cost and improve performance.
The WALK-MAN robot was designed and implemented by IIT within the project WALK-MAN funded by the European Commission. The project started in 2013 and it is now at its final validation phase. The project also involved the University of Pisa in Italy, the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany and the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL) in Belgium. All partners contributed to different aspects of the robot realization: locomotion control, perception capability, affordances and motion planning, simulation tools, manipulation control.
The validation scenario was defined in collaboration with the Italian civil protection body in Florence, that participated to the project as an advisor end-user.
During the final test, the robot WALK-MAN dealt with a scenario representing an industrial plant damaged by an earthquake and where gas leaks and fire are present, thus a dangerous situation for humans. The scenario was recreated in IIT laboratories, where the robot was able to navigate through a damaged room and perform four specific tasks: opening and traversing the door to enter the zone; locating the valve which control the gas leakage and close it; removing debris on its path; and finally identifying the fire and activating a fire extinguisher.
The robot is controlled by a human operator through a virtual interface and a sensorized suit, which permits to operate the robot very naturally, controlling effectively its manipulation and locomotion, like an avatar. The operator guides the robot from a station located remotely from the accident site, receiving images and other information from the robot perception systems.
The first version WALK-MAN was released in 2015, but researchers wanted to introduce new materials and optimize design to reduce the fabrication cost and improve its performances. The new version of WALK-MAN robot has a new lighter upper-body, whose realization took 6 months, involving a team of about 10 people coordinated by Nikolaos Tsagarakis, researcher at IIT and coordinator of the WALK-MAN project.
The new WALK-MAN robot is a humanoid robot 1.85 meters tall, made of lightweight metal, like Ergal (60%), magnesium alloys (25%) and titanium, iron and plastics. Researchers reduced its weight by 31 kilos - from the originally 133 kilos, to 102 kilos - to make the robot more dynamic. Therefore, legs can move faster having a lighter upper body mass to carry. The higher dynamic performance allows the robot to react faster with legs, making step to maintain its balance under the effect of physical interaction disturbances - this is very important to adapt its pace to rough terrain and variable interaction scenarios. The lighter upper-body also reduces its energy consumption and the Walk-Man can operate with a smaller battery (1 kWh) for about two hours.
The lighter upper-body is made of magnesium alloys and composite structures, and it is powered by a new version of lightweight soft actuators. Its performance has been improved reaching an higher payload (10 kg/arm) than the original one (7 kg/arm), thus it can carry heavy objects around and sustain them for more than 10 minutes.
The new upper body is also more compact in size (62 cm shoulders width and 31 cm torso depth), giving to the robot a great flexibility to pass through standard doors and narrow passages.
The hands are a new version of Soft-Hand developed by Centro Ricerche E. Piaggio of University of Pisa (group of Prof. A. Bicchi) in collaboration with IIT. They are lighter, thanks to the composite material used to construct fingers, and they have a better finger-to-palm size ratio (more human like) that allows WALK-MAN to grasp a variety of object shapes. Despite their weight reduction, hands keep the same strength as the original version, as well as their versatility in handling and physical robustness.
WALK-MAN body is controlled by 32 engines and control boards, 4 force and torque sensors at hands and feet, and 2 accelerometers for controlling its balance. Its joints show elastic movement allowing the robot to be compliant and have safe interactions with humans and the environment. Its software architecture is based on XBotCore framework, YARP platform, ROS e Gazebo. The Walk-Man head has cameras, 3D laser scanner and microphone sensors. In the future it can be also equipped with chemical sensors for detecting toxic agents.
In June 2015, Walk-Man was the only EU-funded project to participate to the international robotics competition DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC), launched by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to define the technological standards of the robots that may provide assistance in natural or manmade disasters. The challenge took place in Pomona (California, US) and the robot coped with a scenario inspired by nuclear incidents in Fukushima. In 2016 Walk-Man was tested in the real earthquake scenario, in Amatrice (Italy), to support the civil protection bodies team to perform an inspection of a damaged house and provide information about building stability as well as recovering personal belongings safely.
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