LWH-Arm: A Prototype of 8-DoF Lightweight Humanoid Robot Arm

Abstract

Due to constraint of components, size, weight and cost, it is not an easy task to build lightweight humanoid robot arms in practice. We design and implement a prototype called LWH-Arm, which consists of 8-DoF and mimics real human arm in such aspects as limb shape and size, mass and joint distribution, motion pattern and scope. First, we set up a parameterized humanoid robot arm model by programming, which is de facto an ODE-based simulator and thereby supports physical calculation and simulation. Second, various experiments are carried out upon the simulator to carve out the arm gradually, including mechanical design of shape and size, degree of freedom, material mass and weight, servo torque requirement, motion plan and control, etc. Finally, we fabricate and assemble several prototypes of LWH-Arm, with versions 0.1 to 0.4. The experiment, whether simulated or in prototype, shows LWH-Arm achieves a lightweight, flexible, load-carrying and low-cost prototype of 8-DoF robot arm.