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When joggers meet robots: the past, present, and future of research on humanoid robots

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Abstract

Spawned by fast-paced progress in new materials and integrate circuit technology, the past two decades have witnessed tremendous development of humanoid robots for both scientific and commercial purposes, e.g. emergency response and daily life assistant. At the root of this trend are the increasing research interests and cooperation opportunities across different laboratories and countries. The application-driven requirements of high effectiveness and reliability of humanoid robots led intensive research and development in humanoid locomotion and control theories. In spite of the progress in the area, challenges such as unnatural locomotion control, inefficient multi-motion planning, and relatively slow disturbances recovery set further requirements for the next generation of humanoid robots. Therefore, the purpose of this work is to review the current development of highly representative bipedal humanoid robots and discuss the potential to move the ideas and models forward from laboratory settings into the real world. To this end, we also review the current clinical understanding of the walking and running dynamics to make the robot more human-like.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by the Research Grants Committee, Hong Kong, through the General Research Fund under Grant 17251716.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China

    George H. Z. Liu & Yonghua Chen

  2. School of Automation, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, 210094, Jiangsu, People’s Republic of China

    Michael Z. Q. Chen

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  1. George H. Z. Liu
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  2. Michael Z. Q. Chen
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  3. Yonghua Chen
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Correspondence to Michael Z. Q. Chen.

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George H. Z. Liu, Michael Z. Q. Chen, and Yonghua Chen declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Liu, G.H.Z., Chen, M.Z.Q. & Chen, Y. When joggers meet robots: the past, present, and future of research on humanoid robots. Bio-des. Manuf. 2, 108–118 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42242-019-00038-7

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