A Flying Humanoid Robot based on Thrust Vector Control

The new humanoid robot, Jet-HR2, was developed in 2019 with the primary goal of demonstrating the potential of jet propulsion systems to improve the humanoid robot's locomotor performance. As you can imagine, when we use a humanoid robot to deal with certain emergencies, we don't want the robot to climb stairs step by step to reach the task site. The robot might use jet propulsion to reach the destination more quickly by flying or jumping long distances to perform the task. With these objectives in mind, we have built this new robot platform.
The total weight of the robot including the battery is 17 kg, and the nominal maximum thrust is about 200 N. The robot contains ten joints consisting of brushless motors and harmonic reducers, and four ducted-fans as thrusters.
The demonstration video shows how the robot achieved a controlled takeoff. Due to the small thrust-to-weight ratio, attitude control of the robot during takeoff is a huge challenge. In response, we propose a new approach to achieve posture adjustment by vector control of the thrusters mounted on the feet.
More technical details and experimental results will be published in ICRA 2022.