During the communication and interaction with a human using motions or gestures, a humanoid robot needs to not only look like a human but also behavior like a human to avoid confusions in the communication and interaction. Among human-like behaviors, arm motions of the humanoid robot are essential for the communication with people through motions. In this work, a mathematical representation for characterizing human arm motions is first proposed. The human arm motions are characterized by the elbow elevation angle that is determined using the position and orientation of human hands. That representation is mathematically obtained using an approximation tool, response surface method (RSM). Then, a method to generate human-like arm motions in real time using the proposed representation is presented. The proposed method was evaluated to generate human-like arm motions when the humanoid robot was asked to move its arms from a point to another point including the rotation of hand. An example motion was performed using the KIST humanoid robot, MAHRU

This correspondence proposes a control method for biped robots walking on a geometrically uneven surface with irregular protrusions. The focus is to maintain robot stability in leg and foot motions in order to adapt the foot to uneven terrains. Under the assumption that contact sensors are evenly installed at the foot soles, the geometric information under the landing foot is represented by a terrain matrix, whose elements represent the height of protruded cones. The control strategy of a landing phase (LP) is to form a large polygon with the contact points between the foot and the ground, based on the current zero-moment point (ZMP) and the locations of contact points during the transition from the LP to the stable double-support phase. The center of the polygon formed by the contact points at the end of the LP is to be used as the ZMP when the trajectory for the next step is generated. The gravity-compensated inverted-pendulum-mode-based trajectory is modified based on the newly located ZMP position and is interpolated to remove any trajectory discontinuity and to ensure a smooth transition. A series of computer simulations of a 28-degree-of-freedom (DOF) biped robot with a six-DOF environment model using SimMechanics shows that a stable compliant locomotion on uneven surfaces is successfully achieved with the proposed method.