Paper ID: 2411.07534

Effective Virtual Reality Teleoperation of an Upper-body Humanoid with Modified Task Jacobians and Relaxed Barrier Functions for Self-Collision Avoidance

Steven Jens Jorgensen, Ravi Bhadeshiya

We present an approach for retartgeting off-the-shelf Virtual Reality (VR) trackers to effectively teleoperate an upper-body humanoid while ensuring self-collision-free motions. Key to the effectiveness was the proper assignment of trackers to joint sets via modified task Jacobians and relaxed barrier functions for self-collision avoidance. The approach was validated on Apptronik's Astro hardware by demonstrating manipulation capabilities on a table-top environment with pick-and-place box packing and a two-handed box pick up and handover task.

Submitted: Nov 12, 2024