Development of electronic modules to a humanoid robot using TORP framework

• Grant number: 11/19498-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: February 01, 2012
• End date: January 31, 2013
• Field of knowledge: Engineering - Electrical Engineering
• Principal Investigator: Alexandre da Silva Simões
• Grantee: Vitor Garcia Kopp
• Host Institution: Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus Experimental de Sorocaba. Sorocaba , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The usual procedure nowadays for the development of humanoid robots of the human size is based on the principle that each robot is a fully personalized project, with hardware and software directly embedded with no level of abstraction. Although this methodology allowed countless benefits in the robotics field, on the other hand, it imposes several drawbacks: I) the difficulty to reuse parts in new robots or new versions of the same robots; II) the difficulty to compare the performance of different parts of robots; III) the difficulty to adapt the development needs the expertise of local groups. In previous works, we proposed a framework named "TORP - The Open Robot Project", which proposes a standardization - in electrical, mechanical, and computational dimensions - for robots that share this model of development. Using this methodology, this research group developed the first Brazilian upper torso humanoid robot called CP01 (SIMÕES et. al.,2011). A new full humanoid robot - developed in the "I, Hamlet" project - was developed as a robotics artwork with the objective of interpreting texts based on Shakespeare. The present work proposes adapting this new robot to the TORP framework allowing the development of new models of electronic boards and the investigation of the use of this new technology in the humanoid robotics domain.(AU)