Cybernetic Shoulder

   Apart from the industrial manipulators, which are designed from the practical point of view to be controlled as precisely as possible, we should take the following schemes into account when designing humanoid robots.

• Exclude the flavor of mechanics(solid, iron, etc.), which possibly gives us fear
• Reduce the danger to damage other objects and people around

   Then, what kind of design can satisfy those schemes?

   This project is focusing on the shoulder joint of human-beings. Continuous movement of the center of rotation, with which the joint itselfmoves, particularly yields "Human-like" movement. In our cybernetic shoulder, similar mechanism is mimicked by a closed kinematic chain with prismatic 2 DOF and revolutional 1 DOF joint , which locates the center of rotation at the midpoint of link B and link D in the figure below. Thanks to it, natural shoulder motion to the eye is presented by the minimum number of motors.

   And, flexible link E which connects link B and link D, leads to a large passive compliance, so that it can absorb large impact at the collision with obstacles.

   And, an additional motor is mounted on link G, which modifies the strain force along the axis, in order to realize programmable compliance. It enables to set suitable compliance of the arm for each task; softness for dynamics motion (throwing motion, for example), or hardness for quasi-static motion (carrying a glass with water, for example).

• Masafumi Okada and Yoshihiko Nakamura, Development of a Cybernetic Shoulder -A Three-DOF Mechanism That Imitates Biological Shoulder Motion-, IEEE Transactions on Robotics, vol. 21, no.3, pp.438-443, 2005
• Masafumi Okada, Shigeki Ban and Yoshihiko Nakamura, Skill of Compliance with Controlled Charging/Discharging of Kinetic Energy, Proceeding of IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation(ICRA2002), Vol.3, pp.2455-2460, Washington D.C., U.S.A., May, 2002
• Shigeki BAN, Masafumi OKADA, Yoshihiko NAKAMURA, Skill of Compliance via Contorl of Charging/Discharging of Kinetic Energy (written in Japanese), Proceedings of the 2002 JSME Conference on Robotics and Mechatronics (ROBOMEC'02), 2002
• Hideki KADONE, Masafumi OKADA, Yoshihiko NAKAMURA, Robot motion control using synchronization of nonlinear dynamical systems (written in Japanese), Proceedings of the 2002 JSME Conference on Robotics and Mechatronics (ROBOMEC'02), 2002
• Masafumi Okada,Yoshihiko Nakamura, Shoulder Mechanism for Humanoid Robots that Coexist with Human -Morphological Affinity and Mechanical Passive Compliance- (written in Japanese), Joural of Robotics Society of Japan, Vol.19, No.7, pp.818-821, 2001
• Masafumi Okada,Shin-ichiro Hoshino,Yoshihiko Nakamura, H$B!g(B Design of Hybrid Compliance using Upper/Lower Bound in the Frequency Domain -Shaping and Control of Dynamic Compliance of Humanoid Shoulder Mechanisms- (written in Japanese), Joural of Robotics Society of Japan, Vol.19, No.8, pp.974-982, 2001
• Masafumi Okada, Yoshihiko Nakamura, Shigeki Ban, Design of Programmable Passive Compliance Shoulder Mechanism, ICRA'01(International Conference on Robotics and Automation), pp.348--353, 2001
• Shigeki BAN, Masafumi OKADA an d Yoshihiko NAKAMURA, Skill of Compliance for Humanoid Robots :Charging/Discharging Control of Kinetic Energ (written in Japanese), Proceedings of the 2001 JSME Conference on Robotics and Mechatronics (ROBOMEC'01), 2P1-G6, 2001
• Masafumi Okada, Mathmatical Scientific Expression and Analysis of the Human and Human Environment (written in Japanese), Proceedings of the 19th Annual Conference of the Robotics Society of Japan, 2L12, 2001
• Shigeki Ban,Masafumi Okada,Yoshihiko Nakamura, Skill of Compliance with Charging/Discharging of Energy (written in Japanese), Proceedings of the 19th Annual Conference of the Robotics Society of Japan, 3I25, 2001
• Masafumi Okada,Yoshihiko Nakamura, Development of Cybernetic Shoulder--A Three DOF Mechanism that imitates Human Shoulder-Motions-- (written in Japanese), Joural of Robotics Society of Japan, Vol.18, No.5, pp.690-698, 2000
• M.Okada,Y.Nakamura and S.Hoshino, Design of Active/Passive Hybrid Compliance in the Frequency Domain, ICRA'00(International Conference on Robotics and Automation), pp.2250-2257, 2000
• Masafumi OKADA, Yoshihiko NAKAMURA, Affinity of the Humanoid Motion (written in Japanese), Proceedings of the 2000 JSME Conference on Robotics and Mechatronics (ROBOMEC'00), 2P2-79-104, 2000
• Masafumi Okada,Yoshihiko Nakamura, Shoulder Machanism with Programmable Passive Compliance --Development of the Neo Cybernetic Shoulder-- (written in Japanese), Proceedings of the 18th Annual Conference of the Robotics Society of Japan, 2P17, 2000
• Masafumi Okada,Yoshihiko Nakamura, Shoulder Mechanism with Human-Like Motion (written in Japanese), The 6th Jc-IFToMM Symposium, pp.9-13, 2000
• Masafumi Okada, Human-Like Compliant Motion and Its Mechanism (written in Japanese), Joural of Robotics Society of Japan, Vol.17, No.6, pp.783-765,1999
• M.Okada,Y.Nakamura and S.Hoshino, Development of the Cybernetic Shoulder --A Three DOF Mechanism that Imitates Biological Shoulder-Motion -- , IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems(IROS'99), pp.543-548, 1999
• S. Hoshino, M. Okada, Y. Nakamura, Development of Cybernetic Shoulder with Mechanical Softness (written in Japanese), Proceedings of the 1999 JSME Conference on Robotics and Mechatronics (ROBOMEC'99), 2P1-78-106, 1999
• Masafumi OKADA, Yoshihiko NAKAMURA, Torso Robot with Human-like Motion and Compliance (written in Japanese), Proceedings of the 1999 JSME Conference on Robotics and Mechatronics (ROBOMEC'99), 2P1-78-107, 1999
• Masafumi Okada,Yoshihiko Nakamura, Design of Humanoid Compliance in the Frequency Domain (written in Japanese), Proceedings of the 17th Annual Conference of the Robotics Society of Japan, pp1203-1204, 1999
• Y.Nakamura,M.Okada and S.Hoshino, Development of the Torso Robot - Design of the New Shoulder Mechanism 'Cybernetic shoulder' - , Preprints of 6th International Symposium of Experimental Robotics, pp452-461, 1999
• Masafumi OKADA, Yoshihiko NAKAMURA, Design and Kinematics of Cybernetic Shoulder (written in Japanese), Proceedings of the 1998 JSME Conference on Robotics and Mechatronics (ROBOMEC'98), 1BI2-3, 1998
• M.Okada,Y.Nakamura and K.Yoshimoto, Development of Cybernetic Shoulder : A Three DOF Mechanism that Imitates Biological Shoulder-Motions, 2nd Japan-China Bilateral Symposium on Advanced Manufacturing Engineering, pp196-201, 1998
• Y. Nakamura, M. Okada and K. Ohnuma, Integrating Softness through Acutuator and Mechanism Design (written in Japanese), Symposium of the JSPS FY2000 Research for the Future Program "Micro-mechatronics and Soft-mechanics", 1998
• Masafumi OKADA, Yoshihiko NAKAMURA, The Cybernetic Shoulder : A 3 DOF Mechanism that Imitates Biological Shoulder-Motions (written in Japanese), Proceedings of the 15th Annual Conference of the Robotics Society of Japan, 1997