Design and control of a 3DOFs parallel actuated mechanism for biped application

In this paper, a novel approach to carry out the design of a three degrees of freedom (3DOF) actuated mechanisms for humanoid robots joints is presented. Instead of common serial mechanism, a more robust parallel mechanism was developed. This kind of structure gives the terminal body the ability to move within a cone from the nominal position and permits unlimited rotation about the cone pointing axis. Kinematic analysis are presented in this paper. A biped robot ROBIAN with parallel hip and ankle mechanisms was developed and experimental tests were carried out to evaluate the performances of the adopted structure.