The lightweight design of the humanoid robot frameworks based on evolutionary structural optimization

Abstract

In order to interact with human flexibly, the robots need lightweight structure to adjust their configuration conveniently and further save operation energy. It is a challenge in design when the robots are proceeding tasks with a huge and heavy body. This paper presents an improved framework of the humanoid robot optimized by the evolutionary structural optimization (ESO) method for lightweight design. By analyzing the force of the structure using the finite element software, the location with maximum stresses much smaller than allowable stresses of the materials was found and then removed. By comparison, the weight of the optimized framework achieved 50.15% less than the original one without changing the stiffness and vibration performance, improving the material utilization and extending the service time of the battery.