Armar III - Design of the upper body

Abstract

The goal of the collaborative research center 588 “learning and cooperating multimodal robots” in Karlsruhe is to create a humanoid robot that is able to support humans in a broad variety of different tasks alone or in cooperation with humans. The development of such a robot is a challenging task very different from the design of industrial robots due to a totally different target system of requirements. A learning Humanoid Robot must be able to solve momentarily unknown tasks under changing boundary conditions. The robot must be able to function in an environment originally designed for humans, not for machines. The following requirements for the design of a humanoid robot can be derived from these boundary conditions: A Humanoid Robot should have humanlike appearance, dexterity and manipulation. These requirements lead to a complex design process and a design which has to be highly spatially integrated as well as functionally integrated. This leads to complex interactions between system elements. The demand for mobility adds the requirement of a lightweight design. ARMAR III is the current Humanoid Robot of the collaborative research center 588 which has a modular structure. The modules for neck, torso and arms were designed and built at the Institute of Product Development (IPEK) at the University of Karlsruhe (TH). The design of these modules of the upper body is presented in this article.