Humanoids Operating Mobility Devices Designed for Humans: Experiments on a Segway

Humanoid locomotion is versatile, but typically reserved to reach targets in the close vicinity. The option to employ a personal transporter (PT) made for humans, such as a Segway, presents an intriguing alternative for humanoids navigating the real world and allows them to switch from walking to wheeled locomotion for covering larger distances. In this work, we devise control strategies to allow humanoids to operate PTs while maintaining balance. This control task is different from walking control, but equally challenging, and requires fast reactions. The controller is based on a stack of tasks quadratic program (QP) formulation which takes into account, contacts, stability and bimanual manipulation constraints. We show experimental results of a REEM-C humanoid operating a Segway x2 SE.