Development of Upper-Body Humanoid Robot Using 3-US Parallel Link Mechanism

Humanoids that can mimic human move- ments are effective for avatar robots that are remotely con- trolled by humans. Conventional serial link manipulators can be used for the arms, but the waist of a humanoid affects the range of motion of the head and hands, and it must support the weight of the humanoid’s upper body while moving. Therefore, we focused on the parallel link mechanism, which has higher torque and stiffness than the serial link mechanism. In this study, the 3-US parallel link mechanism with 3-DOFs of posture, which has been studied by the authors, is applied to a waist joint of an upper-body humanoid robot that has a range of motion similar to that of a human. We also develop a serial link arm robot with 7-DOFs and combine it with a waist joint as an upper-body humanoid robot.