Design of an Open Source Bipedal Testbed for Education

A capstone project

The dramatic reduction in price of historically expensive technology has been a common theme in modern day engineering. One particularly useful application of these new affordable electronics is the design of bio-mimicking robots. Student projects like Pupper at Stanford have been able to create quadruped robots the size of a water bottle that can be built using commercially available hardware for a few thousand dollars. These robots are now built all over the world and used as testbeds for students to learn about 4-legged robotic motion and continually improve the field of quadruped robotics. However, there currently does not exist an affordable and open-source humanoid-based bipedal robot. Humanoid robots represent one of the highest potential robotics sectors with applications in defense, healthcare, and disaster rescue. Due to their relatively recent development, humanoid robots still cost over $75,000 even at small scales.   

The goal of this capstone project is to utilize the lessons learned from both commercial projects and student ones such as Pupper, to design a low-cost humanoid bipedal robotic development platform. The proposed open-source platform will cost $15,000, which will greatly benefit aspiring engineers and university researchers alike. At this affordable price, researchers will be able to gain familiarity with humanoid bio-mimicking robots, and our robot will act as a testbed for students to develop bipedal control algorithms and locomotion software. The robot is designed with 10 degrees of freedom and the ability to walk and climb up full size stairs.  

As the lead simulation and controls engineer on the project, I lead all of our teams efforts to design an effective testbed for bipedal motion. I designed scripts and control loops that used reinforcement learning to optimize walking trajectories.