Development of redundant shoulder complex of human-like robot driven by flexible wire tendons

Abstract

For dual-arm robot systems, which continue to become more common in the field of industrial robotics, a redundant shoulder complex could be very important to new developments. However, constructing a kinematically redundant shoulder complex is difficult because of spatial constraints. A novel redundant shoulder complex for a human-like robot that is driven by flexible wire tendons against spatial constraints is proposed. The kinematically redundant shoulder complex allows the human-like robot to generate more natural motions because of the availability of redundant degrees of freedom (DOFs), i.e. six DOFs per side. To control the proposed shoulder complex, a hybrid control scheme is used; the positioning precision was considered, and the ability of the shoulder complex to perform several human-like motions was verified.