Design of Modules and Components for Humanoid Robots

The development of a humanoid robot in the collaborative research centre 588 has the objective of creating a machine that closely cooperates with humans. The collaborative research centre 588 (SFB588) “Humanoid Robots – learning and cooperating multi-modal robots” was established by the German Research Foundation (DFG) in Karlsruhe in May 2000. The SFB588 is a cooperation of the University of Karlsruhe, the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe (FZK), the Research Center for Information Technologies (FZI) and the Fraunhofer Institute for Information and Data Processing (IITB) in Karlsruhe. In this project, scientists from different academic fields develop concepts, methods and concrete mechatronic components and integrate them into a humanoid robot that can share its working space with humans. The long-term target is the interactive cooperation of robots and humans in complex environments and situations. For communication with the robot, humans should be able to use natural communication channels like speech, touch or gestures. The demonstration scenario chosen in this project is a household robot for various tasks in the kitchen. Humanoid robots are still a young technology with many research challenges. Only few humanoid robots are currently commercially available, often at high costs. Physical prototypes of robots are needed to investigate the complex interactions between robots and humans and to integrate and validate research results from the different research fields involved in humanoid robotics. The development of a humanoid robot platform according to a special target system at the beginning of a research project is often considered a time consuming hindrance. In this article a process for the efficient design of humanoid robot systems is presented. The goal of this process is to minimize the development time for new humanoid robot platforms by including the experience and knowledge gained in the development of humanoid robot components in the collaborative research centre 588. Weight and stiffness of robot components have a significant influence on energy efficiency, operating time, safety for users and the dynamic behaviour of the system in general. The finite element based method of topology optimization gives designers the possibility to develop structural components efficiently according to specified loads and boundary conditions without having to rely on coarse calculations, experience or