Gesture-based telemanipulation of a humanoid robot for home service tasks

Humanoid robots can be of great assistance to accomplish dexterous manipulation tasks for the impaired and elderly people, but diversity of the environments and complexity of autonomous algorithms still keep as challenging obstacles. In this paper, we proposed a gesture-based telemanipulation scheme to control the NAO humanoid robot. Taking advantage of the Leap Motion Controller, an intuitive and straightforward way for human-robot interaction has been realized. The NAO robot is telemanipulated to accomplish locomotion, dexterous manipulation and composite tasks, and validated by various experiments. This provides a promising technique for service robotics to deliver assistance for activities of daily living at home or in caring agencies, which could be of greatly help for the impaired and elderly people in an aging society.