Mobilizing human talent by competitions and challenge prizes - The MBZIRC case

The mechatronic development of robots has considerably progressed during the past two decades with various designs based on different actuation technologies, from motorized based systems to hydraulic and soft actuation technologies. Despite though the advancements in the design of motorized robots significant limitations remain, preventing the robot hardware (physical structure and actuation) from equalling the performance of human in locomotion, manipulation and full body motion in terms of physical robustness, power performance and efficiency. Considering the compliant actuation principles and technologies developed at IIT this talk will present their application on the development of COMAN, WALK-MAN and CENTAURO platforms. Details on the actuation and robot design approaches to achieve the necessary performance in terms of physical resilience, high power and fast motion capabilities will be introduced. Recent work and considerations on the energy efficiency of compliant actuation systems will also be discussed.