Human-robot Interaction Oriented Human-in-the-loop Real-time Motion Imitation on a Humanoid Tri-Co Robot

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Inspired by the concept of Tri-Co Robots, a real-time motion imitation based human-robot interaction method is proposed to telemanipulate a life-size humanoid robot. First, a motion capture system is established to retarget the accurate motion data to a skeletal model. Second, the real-time data transfer for a human-in-the-loop control system is realized through the publish-subscribe messaging mechanism in ROS (Robot Operating System). Third, a fast mapping algorithm is developed to convert BVH (BioVision Hierarchy) data into corresponding joint angles which are then encapsulated in a designed communication protocol and sent to a low-level slave controller through a serial port. Finally, visualization terminals render it more convenient to make comparisons between two different but simultaneous motion systems. Experimentation on complicated gesture imitation shows the feasibility of the proposed methodology, and the synchronous latency of less than 0.5 seconds validated its real-time performance. The proposed human-in-the-loop imitation control method enhances robot interaction capability in a more natural way and improves robot adaptability to uncertain and dynamic environments.