Development of Cybernetic Shoulder. A Three DOF Mechanism that Imitates Human Shoulder-Motions.

Abstract

In this paper, we develop a three DOF mechanism for humanoid robots, which we call the cybernetic shoulder. This mechanism imitates the motion of the human shoulder and does not have a fixed center of rotation, which enables unique human-like motion in contrast to the conventional design of anthropomorphic seven DOF manipulators that have base three joint axes intersecting at a fixed point. Taking advantage of the cybernetic shoulder's closed kinematic chain, we can easily introduce the programmable passive compliance adopting the actuation redundancy and elastic members. This is important for the integrated safety of humanoid robots that are inherently required to physically interact with the human.