The modular design of the distributed edutainment biped humanoid robot system

Abstract

With the "education in entrainment" concept, this research develops critical parts and technologies of the edutainment robot. With proper specifications and interface integrations, the distributed-control application environment of a biped humanoid robot is successfully established. Developed parts of this robot are: (1) humanoid robot mechanism (2) intelligent network-based joint servo actuator (3) MCU-based robot controller (4) ZigBee wireless networking module (5) PC-based virtual-reality robot software user interface. Besides, three enhancements of the distributed control protocol are developed to further increase the agility of the robot operation. With these results, the technology and cost barriers to develop a fully distributed humanoid robot with both distributed mechanical and control modules are no more unattainable.