An Alternative Open Architecture Controller Design for the Bioloid Humanoid Robot

Robot-based assistive technologies have in recent times, become an important research topic. Most commercial robots come with control systems which may support several types of user inputs/outputs, but usually provide support for application-specific motion control. In developing high level robot-based assistive application, there is a need for more open scheme for controller design. In this paper, a Raspberry Pi-based controller intended to extend the features of the commercial Bioloid humanoid robot was designed to provide an open-architecture alternative than its proprietary controller, the CM-530.Given that the custom-designed controller is more open andprovide greater flexibility to developers, a comparison is also madetowards its ability to provide better support in terms of controlperspectives. The custom-designed controller provides bettercapabilities regarding to its open-architecture which gives anopportunity for other developers to delve further into thestructure knowledge that helps many aspects of applicationdevelopment. The open characteristics of proposed controllerconsequently will enhance the controller potential/capabilities andcan be utilized by other robots in future. The outcome of theexperiments revealed that the open control system provided by theRaspberry Pi platform has slightly higher average powerconsumption which is 2.04W difference from CM-530 controllerduring the idle mode of 18 servomotors, but is able to providesbetter capabilities. As for dynamic servomotors, the averagepower difference recorded for single servomotor motion is 3.08Wand 9.3W for multiple servomotors. All results were calculatedand graphed using MATLAB R2015a software.