On the discrete-continuous control of basic skills for humanoid robots

Within the next years a new generation of humanoid robots is going to be developed being able to manage autonomously sophisticated tasks in a complex, time variant domestic environment. To cope with these advanced requirements a new multi-sensor based discrete-continuous supervisory control concept is proposed, which is able to accomplish even complex human skills. Each skill is divided into a sequence of Primitive Skills (PS). Depending on the multi-sensor perception of the robot state, the discrete control has to provide an optimal selection and activation of different PS. On the other hand the continuous control has to assure that each PS is performed by means of the most appropriate sub-controllers. Both theoretical approach and experimental results of the ongoing research will be presented in this paper.