Design and development of shock absorbable tendon driven ankles for high-powered humanoids

High-powerd humanoid robots may move at a high speed in the same environment as human. When they receive shocks suddenly, instantaneous impact is applied to the structure of the feet and they can be broken. So, robots require shock-reduction mechanisms at the ankles. In this paper, we present one-legged robot with its ankle mechanism which can reduce landing impact by using a spring elastic element. We describe the mechanical structure and the relationship between mechanical structures and shocks. We verifie such a relation and checked that our proposed leg is effective.