TWIMP: Two-Wheel Inverted Musculoskeletal Pendulum (Humanoids 2018)

Title: TWIMP: Two-Wheel Inverted Musculoskeletal Pendulum as a Learning Control Platform in the Real World with Environmental Physical Contact Authors: Kento Kawaharazuka*, Tasuku Makabe*, Shogo Makino, Kei Tsuzuki, Yuya Nagamatsu, Yuki Asano, Fumihito Sugai, Kei Okada, Koji Kawasaki, Masayuki Inaba (* Equal Contribution) Accepted at Humanoids2018 arxiv - By the recent spread of machine learning in the robotics field, a humanoid that can act, perceive, and learn in the real world through contact with the environment needs to be developed. In this study, as one of the choices, we propose a novel humanoid TWIMP, which combines a human mimetic musculoskeletal upper limb with a two-wheel inverted pendulum. By combining the benefit of a musculoskeletal humanoid, which can achieve soft contact with the external environment, and the benefit of a two-wheel inverted pendulum with a small footprint and high mobility, we can easily investigate learning control systems in