Motion control of a humanoid head

This report describes the design and implementation of a motion control algorithm for a humanoid robotic head. The humanoid head consists of a neck with four degrees of freedom and two eyes (a stereo pair system) with one common and one independent degree of freedom. The kinematic and dynamic properties of the head are analyzed and modeled using bondgraphs and screw theory. A motion control algorithm is designed that receives, as input, the output of a vision processing algorithm and utilizes the redundancy of the joints. This algorithm is designed to enable the head to focus on and follow a target, showing human-like behavior. The dynamic model is used to analyze the performance of the control algorithm in a simulated environment. The algorithm has been implemented and tested on a real-time control platform. The migration from simulation environment to the real-time platform is governed by a step-by-step integration and testing procedure. After each step, the algorithm output is validated and its performance evaluated. The algorithm is implemented succesfully on a real-time PC-104 platform.

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