Deploying the NASA Valkyrie Humanoid for IED Response: An Initial Approach and Evaluation Summary

(To be presented at the IEEE Humanoids 2019 Conference) preprint: https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.00761 Abstract: As part of a feasibility study, this paper shows the NASA Valkyrie humanoid robot performing an end-to-end improvised explosive device (IED) response task. To demonstrate and evaluate robot capabilities, sub-tasks highlight different locomotion, manipulation, and perception requirements: traversing uneven terrain, passing through a narrow passageway, opening a car door, retrieving a suspected IED, and securing the IED in a total containment vessel (TCV). For each sub-task, a description of the technical approach and the hidden challenges that were overcome during development are presented. The discussion of results, which explicitly includes existing limitations, is aimed at motivating continued research and development to enable practical deployment of humanoid robots for IED response. For instance, the data shows that operator pauses contribute to 50% of the total completion time, which implies that further work is needed on user interfaces for increasing task completion efficiency.* The authors are with the NASA Johnson Space Center, TRACLabs, the Institute for Human Machine and Cognition (IHMC), Jacobs Technology, METECS, CACI, and The University of Texas at Austin. The first author is partially supported by a NASA Space Technology Research Fellowship (NSTRF) Grant # NNX15AQ42H This work was supported by the Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office (CTTSO). *Disclaimer: Trade names and trademarks are used in this report for identification only. Their usage does not constitute an official endorsement, either expressed or implied, by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.