Development of a bipedal humanoid robot having antagonistic driven joints and three DOF trunk

The authors proposed the construction of a bipedal humanoid robot that has a head system with visual sensors, two hand-arm systems, 3-DOF trunk and antagonistic driven joints using the nonlinear spring mechanism, on the basis of WL-13. And we really designed and built it. In addition, as the first step to realize the dynamic cooperative motion of limbs and 3-DOF trunk, the authors developed the control algorithm and the simulation program that generates the trajectory of 3-DOF trunk for stable biped walking pattern even if the trajectories of upper and lower limbs are arbitrarily set for locomotion and manipulation respectively. Using this preset walking pattern with variable muscle tension references correspond to swing phase and stance phase, the authors performed walking experiment of dynamic walking forward and backward dynamic dance with 3-DOF trunk motion and carrying, on a flat level surface (1.28 s/step with a 0.15 m step length). As a result, the efficiency of our walking control algorithm and robot system was proved. In this paper, the mechanism of WABIAN and its control method are introduced.