A shoulder structure of muscle-driven humanoid with shoulder blades

Abstract

We are trying to create an innovative humanoid which has increased flexibility by imitating the structure of a human shoulder, especially the shoulder blade. We designed a flexible shoulder structure for a muscle-driven humanoid robot which has the following merits, 1) wide range of movement and flexible shoulder like humans, 2) having the shoulder structure built on to the outside of the chest, allowing space for a lot of parts inside the chest. We developed a prototype humanoid robot named "Blade" which has a musculo-skeletal humanoid torso with the shoulder blade, driven by motor-actuated tendons. This paper describes the advantages of the structure of the shoulder blade, the development of a humanoid with the shoulder blade, and some experiments showing its range of movement using the prototype humanoid robot we presented.