Poppy Humanoid the Anthropomorphic Open Source Robot
The Poppy Project
Poppy is an open source platform for the creation, use and sharing of interactive 3D printed robots. It is a set of several robots where both the hardware and software are open source, where the body parts can be 3D printed. Therefore it is easy to build, cheaper than most robots, and most of all, it is modifiable and adaptable to each use case.
In this story, I will briefly illustrate example projects where Poppy is used, list the different robots in the project and also the creation and development of the poppy project.
Example projects
Since its creation in 2013 [1], its use has expanded considerably for education use, artists, scientists and hackers.
An example of artistic use of Poppy is the dance performance named Lesson of Moon which was for instance performed at the Grand Palais, Paris as part of the exposition Artists & Robots. This show features a young female dancer with Poppy Humanoid dancing for around ten minutes.
An example of research project using Poppy is the project Keraal using Poppy humanoid as a robot coach for physical rehabilitation, making the most of its spine [3].
Another research project took advantage of the low cost of the Poppy torso to make statistical analysis of learning performance in reinforcement learning algorithms [6].
3 Different Robots
The Poppy platform actually proposes 3 different robots :
- Poppy humanoid, an anthropomorphic humanoid robot. It is the flagship creature. It is aesthetic, modular, and parametric. This platform is actively used in labs, engineering schools, FabLabs, and artistic projects. Even though the 3D parts are printable, its main cost comes from the motors. Poppy humanoid uses good bioloid motors, which can each cost 200 euros to 500 euros depending on its torque. Therefore the whole Poppy humanoid can cost around 7,000–10,000 euros.
- Poppy torso, is a simplified version of Poppy Humanoid. Cheaper, layable on a desk, it is particularly suitable for classroom use, in fablabs or in all kinds of public events. Poppy torso cost a bit more than half the price of Poppy humanoid, which is around 4,000–6,000 euros. Below are pictures of a first version of the Poppy torso, the official version actually features a suction pad.
- Ergo Jr is the most accessible Poppy robot. It is cheap because it uses weaker motors, Ergo Jr is portable and easily customisable. Perfectly suited to beginners and younger, it is a good introduction to robotics through a series of turnkey activities. It is the main platform used in educational projects. Its design is inspired by the Pixar Luxo Jr. This robotic arm, consisting of 6 motors allowing life-like movements and 3D printed elements. The use of rivets make the assembly, modification and reassembly easy. Ergo Jr comes with three tools for different interactions with its environment: a lampshade, a gripper and a pen holder.
Below I will develop on Poppy Humanoid.
Creation of Poppy
The Poppy platform has been specifically designed by Inria [1] around 2010–2014 to provide a low cost, easy to use and share (open-source) platform that allows fast and flexible experimentation of various robotic morphologies. In particular, the skeleton of this platform is printable with conventional 3D printers, which offers the unique opportunity to modify easily the mechanical design of the robot. In the context of a specific project, you will have the possibility to modify the kinematics of various parts to create a better match to your specific needs. The platform Poppy which allows fast and flexible experimentation owing to 3D printing to adapt the robot for specific uses.
Used today in multiple domains ranging from science to education and art, it was developed by researchers from the Flowers team of Inria, as the first worldwide open-source 3D printed humanoid robot. The first papers published [1,2] explain the design of Poppy humanoid as a platform to study biped locomotion by a humanoid robot. The Poppy platform was created in this research stream as a light-weight robot to research semi-passive dynamics. In particular, its originality is that it proposes to study the role of a bio-inspired vertebral column for semi-passive dynamic walking[4].
This idea was first implemented with the robot Arcoban as results from a collaboration between INRIA and University of Bordeaux I/Labri [5], before evolving into Poppy and the robots of the Rhoban project.
While in the beginning, Inria was leading the poppy project, since 2019, Inria has transferred its research from its ecosystem to a multi-partner structure. The association Poppy Station has been created to bring together players from the world of business, research, training, culture and education who want to make robotics an opportunity at the service of mankind.
Poppy Station aims at the development and preservation of robotic ecosystems and associated open source or free technologies, in all fields where their use can allow this development and preservation, and in particular in the fields of education, training, arts and research.
Poppy Station members are mainly public institutions while the partners are mainly private companies.
One of the latter, Pollen Robotics, founded by former members of Flowers team, Inria and creators of Poppy, have created Reachy, a human-size humanoid torso, that they say is an “expressive open-source humanoid platform programmable with Python. He is particularly good at interacting with people and manipulating objects.”
Use of Poppy
Poppy robot is designed to be anthropomorphic robot [1,2] with 25 degrees of freedom (DOF) including a 5 DOFs articulated trunk. It has a unique capability of realising movements of the lumbar spine. The 25 DOF correspond to 25 motors as shown in the picture below (for the version 1 of Poppy). Each can be controlled independently and they can be controlled in parallel.
In November 2020, they have released a version 3 of Poppy.
Poppy that can be used with its hardware platform or with the V-rep simulator. It can be programmed with python, using the pypot library, or it can also have a web interface with snap. For a technical tutorial on how to install and launch the first programs on Poppy you can refer to https://maithegeek.medium.com/poppy-v1-the-open-source-printable-humanoid-robot-df2825922715
References
- Matthieu Lapeyre, Pierre Rouanet, Pierre-Yves Oudeyer. (2013). Poppy: a New Bio-Inspired Humanoid Robot Platform for Biped Locomotion and Physical Human-Robot Interaction. Proceedings of the 6th International Symposium on Adaptive Motion in Animals and Machines (AMAM).
- Matthieu Lapeyre (2014). Poppy:open-source,3D printed and fully-modular robotic platform for science, art and education. Theses, Université de Bordeaux.
- Maxime Devanne, Sao Mai Nguyen, Olivier Rémy-Neris, Béatrice Le Gales-Garnett, Gilles Kermarrec, and André Thépaut. (2018). A Co-design Approach for a Rehabilitation Robot Coach for Physical Rehabilitation Based on the Error Classification of Motion Errors, IEEE International Conference on Robotic Computing (IRC), 352–357.
- Olivier Ly, Matthieu Lapeyre, Pierre-Yves Oudeyer (2011). Bio-inspired vertebral column, compliance and semi-passive dynamics in a lightweight robot. International Conference on Robots and Systems.
- Olivier Ly, Pierre-Yves Oudeyer (2010) Acroban the Humanoid: Playful and Compliant Physical Child-Robot Interaction, in ACM SIGGRAPH’2010 Emerging Technologies.
- Sébastien Forestier, Yoan Mollard, Pierre-Yves Oudeyer (2017) Intrinsically motivated goal exploration processes with automatic curriculum learning. https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.02190
