System Architecture and Real-World Task Realization of Musculoskeletal Wheeled Robot Musashi-W with Various Hardware Components

Musculoskeletal humanoids possess flexible and redundant bodies that closely resemble the human body. However, their application in real-world tasks has been impeded by the challenges involved in achieving bipedal walking with flexible bodies. To address this issue, we developed Musashi-W, a musculoskeletal wheeled robot. The Musashi-W comprises an upper body musculoskeletal system, lower body wheels, a linear motion mechanism that corresponds to the back, and a rotatable head equipped with a camera. Nevertheless, managing the combination of different circuit systems and drive systems has been a challenge. Hence, we developed an integrated infrastructure capable of managing these systems seamlessly. Moreover, body schema learning, reflex control, and the utilization of variable stiffness are crucial for handling musculoskeletal humanoids. We have combined these elements to construct a task realization system using musculoskeletal humanoids. We demonstrated the effectiveness of our system by realizing a table-setting task through dynamic cloth manipulation using variable stiffness.