A steering wheel manipulation scheme by an anthropomorphic humanoid robot in a constrained vehicle environment

In recent years, wheel turning tasks have become of interest in disaster response scenarios. Particularly valve-turning and wheel steering for tasks in which a humanoid drives a vehicle. Most research has focused in valve-turning with dual arm motions to turn the valve as much and as quickly as possible. Valve-turning compared to steer-wheel turning consist of very different constraints due to the task´s environment. Driving suffers from strong constraints in mobility, reachability, and visibility, all the while turning consists of accurate steering in sequences of various degrees, directions, and speeds. In this work we study how effectively the atlas humanoid robot can steer the driving wheel to commanded angles within the hard constraints of the task. A three step approach is suggested as part of the manipulation scheme: (i) A user guided task-level assignment for limited visibility to approximate the wheel plane; (ii) a discretization of the wheel to generate inverse kinematic (IK) solutions while constraining 4 DoFs; and (iii) a steering mechanism to turn the wheel in the presence of minimal feedback. Our results show that the approach effectively reaches commanded angles in the presence of hard constraints, with over 98.24% accuracy. This is a promising step as part of a greater approach to automate the process of vehicle driving.