Software architecture for humanoid robots with versatile task performing capabilities

Recently, life-sized humanoid robots been developed and evaluated through competitions involving a series of missions under simulated human-made and natural disasters. However, it is difficult to generalize about the software architectures for humanoid robots that can perform various tasks such as rotating valves, picking up objects, and opening doors. Furthermore, even though there a number of effective tools like Robot Operating System (ROS) for robot software architectures, it is hard to define their structure or function set. In this paper, we present a simple and well-structured software architecture with a generalized function set. Its hierarchy is suitable for simulation as well as actual experiments for various tasks, and it can perform various tasks by combining the function set properly. The effectiveness of the proposed architecture was verified through a valve rotating task by using a humanoid robot platform.