Handling the Booster

This documentation describes how to handle the Booster T1 and K1 in different situations.

Note

The real K1 is currently only partially supported. The button interface is not done yet (do not press them!) and the camera support is not finished. Also the provided learned walk could only be tested once due to time constrains and is only suitable as a proof of concept. Similar stands for its PD motor parameters, which are only guessed by us and not evaluated yet.

Inactive

Whenever the robot is not used, it should be stored on its stance:

Turning On

The robot can be turned on with a short press on the power button. After booting up, it will say "waiting for higher level services", followed by "waiting for lower level services". If everything started correctly it will say "body ready". This process can take a few minutes.

Button Interface

We use the middle button as the main one, to switch the robot between its states. To unsiff the robot all three buttons must be pressed for one second.

When the emergency button is pressed, the robot must be brought back manually into the unstiff state.

Note

Please validate for your T1 before use, if the button mapping works as expected, especially if you only have two buttons instead of three as shown in the image.

General Use

When turned on, the robot can switch between different states as shown in the following image (Source: RoboCup SPL Rules 2023):

• From every state you can switch into the Unstiff state by pressing all three buttons for at least one second (blue arrow).
• You can switch from Unstiff to Initial to Penalize to Playing and back to Penalize with a press of the main button (gray arrows).
• Standby, Ready, and Set can only be reached in some demos or via the GameController.
• Calibration is described in the calibration chapter (purple arrow).

We recommend to keep the robot on its stand-structure when unstiff and pressing the main switch button two times to bring it into manual penalized for a standing pose. While in playing the robot uses its neuronal network for walking, so lifting the robot up (even when standing!) is prohibited and dangerous. When manual penalized the robot can be lifted up.

Note

In Initial the robot will be unstiff without any damping. This is due to safety, as the state Unstiff, which uses a damping mode, can only be left when manual penalized. For competition usage those state transitions must be adjusted!

To prevent damages to the robot itself a restrictive fall will be active once the robots torso is tilted too much. Here the robot uses a semi-damping mode to reach a standing position but also to prevent damages to the motors. As stand-up motions are currently not supported, we highly recommend to disable them for the real robot. Note that this behavior is deactive when manual penalized. Therefore if the robot is manually penalized and falls, no safety is active.

Handle Example

Show below is an example how to handle the T1 for a test walk:

Possible Problems

Here we list possible problems that can occur while the Booster robot is being used.

• Emergency: The emergency button was pressed and the robot is unstiff. Bring the robot into the PlayDead state and then release the emergency button.
• Unstiff while playing: The robot itself has some safety features, which can trigger this fail-safe. One reason could be a joint overheating.
• Sometimes the motionboard is not reachable for the T1. In that case nothing happens and the robot must be turned off and on again.
• Sometimes the audio does not work and the robot does not say anything anymore. In that case the robot must be turned off and on again.

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Last update: October 19, 2025