REEM-C walking stability improved with MTi-30 AHRS

31st March 2014

PAL Robotics is robot manufacturer specialized in humanoid and service robots since 2004. They provide robots and robotic components to several sectors and industries, including research and academic institutions, meetings and events, trade fairs, retail and healthcare.

REEM-C is the third generation of biped robots, and has been designed as a platform to speed up robotics research and teaching. REEM-C is 100% integrated into ROS (Robot Operating System), the “de facto” robotics standard in academia, reducing drastically the time a researcher needs to start experimenting his algorithms on the real robot.

“MTi-30 AHRS is a cornerstone in our robot, it allows us to know precisely in real-time its current attitude, and we use it as feedback for all our algorithms." - Joan Oliver Poyatos, PAL Robotics

The humanoid has 44 degrees of freedom, two Intel® Core™ i7 computers, stereo cameras, microphones, LEDs mouth, range lasers, 6 axis force/torque sensors, tactile sensors and an Xsens MTi-30 AHRS! It comes with already implemented walking algorithm based on the Zero Moment Point, allowing it to walk at 1.5 Km/h for 3 hours.

REEM-C has a MTi-30 AHRS sensor in the torso. This sensor improves walking stability on flat terrain, but it is an essential part to make it possible walking on on ramps, stairs and, in general, on rough terrain.

(Click image for larger view)

They have integrated MTi-30 AHRS into the ros_control, allowing to use the sensor in real-time control loops running at hundreds Hertzs in a PC with Linux and Xenomai, an open source real-time operating system. The ros_control takes as input the joint state data from a robot's actuator's encoders and an input set point. It uses a generic control loop feedback mechanism, typically a PID controller, to control the output, typically effort, sent to your actuators. ros_control gets more complicated for physical mechanisms that do not have one-to-one mappings of joint positions, efforts, etc but these scenarios are accounted for using transmissions.

PAL Robotics’ mission is to provide robotic products and services which can become an integral part of our daily life. PAL Robotics' service and humanoid robots are designed for the people and to serve the people, therefore the company wants to provide reliable solutions that really improve the daily work of their clients and their quality of life.

The MTi-30 is discontinued now. As a replacement we offer two AHRS options: MTi-630 and the MTi-630R (rugged). Find out more about these products: