Human-Likeness Indicator for Robot Posture Control and Balance

Abstract: Similarly to humans, humanoid robots require posture control and balance to walk and interact with the environment. In this work posture control in perturbed conditions is evaluated as a performance test for humanoid control. A specific performance indicator is proposed: the score is based on the comparison between the body sway of the tested humanoid standing on a moving surface and the sway produced by healthy subjects performing the same experiment. This approach is here oriented to the evaluation of a human-likeness. The measure is tested using a humanoid robot in order to demonstrate a typical usage of the proposed evaluation scheme and an example of how to improve robot control on the basis of such a performance indicator score