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This paper describes a methodology translating human spatial coordination in a humanoid robots context. Once the human locomotion is captured, we highlight coordination relations describing motions. Relations and inverse kinematics are applied to a virtual humanoid, which is a tradeoff between human (anthropomorphic proportions) and robot (joints configuration). Further, we quantify all required adaptations for a real humanoid, such as scaling and equilibrium. Finally, this methodology is applied to a specific humanoid robot (called NAO) in order to illustrate and compare some preliminary results.

Gait development for bipedal/humanoid robots has been a field of study with a lot of attention for several years and is becoming increasingly important as robots slowly become part of our daily lives. Therefore, it is expectable that robots should adopt human-like behaviors in order to make their interactions with humans more natural and studies have been made involving robots that have a natural, human-like gait. However, very few focus on scenarios with slippery floors. In this paper, the humanoid robot NAO is used and the effects of a human-based walking pattern on the robot’s balance when walking on floors with different slipperiness degrees were analyzed. The simulations are done having the robot equipped with specially developed shoes that enable the measurement of the friction coefficient. From that analysis, an algorithm that automatically adapts the gait parameters to the floor’s slipperiness was developed, in order to prevent the robot from suffering unexpected disturbances and possibly falling over. This paper focusses on preventing balance disturbances, instead of correcting them.

This study addresses abrupt global warming and a slowdown thereafter that happened in recent decades. It separated the role of anthropogenic CO2 led linear trend to that from natural factors (volcano and the sun). It segregates a period 1976–1996 where two explosive volcanic eruptions occurred in active phases of strong solar cycles and also the period covers two whole solar cycles. That same period coincided with abrupt global warming. This study suggests that domination of a particular type of ENSO, the Central Pacific (CP) type ENSO and related feedback from water vapour played a crucial role. A plausible mechanism was proposed that could be triggered by explosive volcanos via a preferential North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) phase. It modulates the CP ENSO via extratropical Rossby wave and affects the Aleutian Low. From that angle, it is possible to explain the disruption of ENSO and Indian Summer Monsoon teleconnection during the abrupt warming period and how it recovered subsequently afterward. Interestingly, individual models and also the CMIP5 model ensemble fails to agree with the observation. This study further explores important contributions due to natural drivers those are missed by models.

The work presented here focus on humanoid walking. More precisely we deliberately divide the control architecture in two distinct parts, coordination and stability. The goal is to design robot coordination mimicking the human one, by reducing the latter’s complexity to a minimal set of relations. In our previous work, polynomial approximations were done and implemented into a kinematic simulation of an anthropomorphic humanoid model. This simulation showed smooth biomimetic walking at different speeds. This paper presents the real-world implementation of our methodology using the humanoid robot NAO. The results are promising for applying this entire work on more complex humanoid robots, other gaits, and gait transitions.