iRonCub for Aerial Humanoid Robotics - Artificial and Mechanical Intelligence - IIT

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2024-08-29 13:00:13

Research on humanoids usually focuses on manipulation and bipedal terrestrial locomotion. However, we believe that for certain applications as, for example, disaster response, these robots could benefit from having also aerial locomotion skills, which is still an unexplored research direction for humanoids. Hence, we define aerial humanoid robotics as the outcome of the platforms having the following capacities:

To implement the aerial humanoid robotics onto the humanoid robot iCub, we carry out research activities along with different directions.

We carry on our research activities with the flying humanoid robot iRonCub. We research how to improve the humanoid robot mechanical design to make it fly effectively.

We have designed a CAD model of the robot using PTC Creo, which is continuously improved based on feedback from real experiments. The current version is iRonCub-Mk3. From the CAD model, we use a semi-automatic URDF generation procedure to retrieve updated kinematics and dynamics information. We use the URDF model for planning, control, estimation and simulations.

We have two prototypes of iRonCub, built on top of iCub v2.5 and v3.0. Both versions are endowed with 4 jet engines, two of them mounted on the arms and the other two on a jetpack attached to the robot’s back. Currently, experiments are carried on with iRonCub version 3.