  The problem of finding thermally minimizing configurations of a humanoid
robot to recover its actuators from unsafe thermal states is addressed. A
first-order, data-driven, effort-based, thermal model of the robot's actuators
is devised, which is used to predict future thermal states. Given this
predictive capability, a map between configurations and future temperatures is
formulated to find what configurations, subject to valid contact constraints,
can be taken now to minimize future thermal states. Effectively, this approach
is a realization of a contact-constrained thermal inverse-kinematics (IK)
process. Experimental validation of the proposed approach is performed on the
NASA Valkyrie robot hardware.
