JediBot - Experiments in human-robot sword-fighting

Real-world sword-fighting between human opponents requires extreme agility, fast reaction time and dynamic perception capabilities. This video shows experimental results achieved with a 3-D vision system and a highly reactive control architecture which allowfs a robot to sword fight against human opponents. An online trajectory generator is used as an intermediate layer between low-level trajectory-following controllers and high-level visual perception. This architecture enables robots to react nearly instantaneously to the unpredictable human motions perceived by the vision system as well as to sudden sword contacts detected by force and torque sensors. Results show how smooth and highly dynamic motions are generated on-the-fly while using the vision and force/torque sensor signals in the feedback loops of the robot-motion controller. Reference: T. Kröger, K. Oslund, T. Jenkins, D. Torczynski, N. Hippenmeyer, R. B. Rusu, O. Khatib: JediBot - Experiments in human-robot sword-fighting, Proc. Int. Symp. Exp. Robot., Québec City (2012)