Development of the cybernetic shoulder-a three DOF mechanism that imitates biological shoulder-motion

Abstract

Discusses the integration of "mechanical softness" into the humanoid robot mechanisms design. The mechanical softness includes such requirements as human-like high mobility and human-like sensitive compliance. We focus on the shoulder mechanism, and propose a parallel mechanism to integrate the two requirements. The mechanism is called the cybernetic shoulder and possesses three degrees-of-freedom. The nature of motion curves of the human shoulder, and the design and development of the cybernetic shoulder are described with the computation issue of kinematics. The integration of compliance into the parallel mechanism is also discussed, and its experimental evaluation is made.