Luis Cabas, Ramiro Cabas, Pavel Staroverov, Mario Arbulu, Dmitry Kaynov, Carlos Perez, and Carlos Balaguer (2006)
Challenges in the design of the humanoid robot RH-1
Professional Engineering Publishing.
This paper describes the analysis and design of the humanoide robot R.H.1, made in
the Robotics labs at the University Carlos III of Madrid.
The R.H.1 is an autonomous humanoid robot that was conceived starting off of his
predecessor, the RH-0. In spite of having a very similar morphology to its predecessor, it
now includes with a new electronics, batteries and hardware on board.
The R.H.1 is a humanoid robot build as an investigation platform to make the biped
walk stable. Once this first stage was accomplished successfully, it is now conceived to
interact with human being surroundings with or without the presence of these.
This will entail to an extraordinary versatility of our humanoid but also the increase
of weight made necessary a new mechanical and structural design, to be able to satisfy
the current requirements.
The robot design implied the creation of specifications to construct the same design
from which himself on who the model chosen to walk in a dynamic way was set executed.
The intention, was to obtain suitable specifications in order to obtain successfully the
final model.
As first step, the robot weights were calculated in order to obtain the inverse dynamics
and to verify the actuators. Later, the “mechanical requesting” were calculated in order
to verify the robot structural behavior during the different experimental gaits the robot
was submitted to.
Once the calculations were accomplished all those components that did not correctly
work were redesign by CAD/CAM software, specially those that produced mechanical
play.
Another very important aspect to be considered in the design, is to correctly design
those joints where the crossing of axes, calls “Joints of Rectangular Axes” (JRA) take
place. The difficulty or challenge of these joints consist in trying to obtain two or more
degree of freedom (DOF) in very little space. The RH-1 has several joints of rectangular
axes, JRA, of second and third degree.
Thanks to the observations obtained from the previous project and in spite of not
to being a totally new robot, it has been optimized such in such a way that it could be
considered as new.
For this reason, it is our intention to transmit the acquired experience in this investigation,
that we think it will be of great interest very useful for the robotics world.