Design of programmable passive compliance shoulder mechanism

Design of mechanical compliance would be one of the most important technical foci in making humanoid robots really interactive with the humans. For safety insurance mechanical compliance should be developed for humanoid robots. The introduction of the passive compliance to humanoid robots has large possibility for achieving human skill by using the dynamical energy stored in the compliant members. Programmable passive compliance plays an important role in coping with the changing environments and task execution. We evaluate the effectiveness of the passive compliance for the realization of human skill and design a programmable passive compliance mechanism ´PPC cybernetic shoulder´ which is a four degree of freedom shoulder mechanism for humanoid robots using a closed kinematic chain. The programmability of the PPC cybernetic shoulder is evaluated by experiments.