Modular Real-Time System for Upper-Body Motion Imitation on Humanoid Robot Talos

In this paper, real-time motion transfer from a human demonstrator to an advanced humanoid robot Talos is presented. The objective of the motion transfer is to reproduce the demonstrated motion as close as possible with the real robot. Using simple motion transfer while considering physical constraints and safety issues of the robot, a successful motion imitation approach is proposed. By using a low-cost RGB-D camera, human motions are being captured and transferred to the robot. Our main focus was to enable real-time motion imitation and implement a safety module to prevent the robot from executing fast, non-safe movements. While the stability of the robot has not yet been considered, with the proposed approach Talos can safely imitate upper-body human motion in real-time without significant delays. The system was experimentally evaluated in simulation and on the real robot.