Whole-body motion of a Humanoid robot for passing through a door - Opening a door by impulsive force

There are many kinds of large, heavy objects, or objects with geometrical constraints in our daily life, but non-fixed robots such as humanoid robots are still not able to manipulate them sufficiently well. In this paper we focus on a swing door as a heavy object with geometrical constraints, and present a method for the humanoid robots to open it by using impulsive forces. We first discuss on momentum transfer from the robot to the door. Then we propose a method of generating a whole body motion to impact on the door. We analyze the dynamic model of the door, and we confirm the validity of our method through simulation. At last, we realize a motion of the robot opening a swing door quickly by the method in experiment with the HRP-2 robot hardware.