A Human-Like Robot Hand and Arm with Fluidic Muscles: Biologically Inspired Construction and Functionality

Humanoid robots are fascinating from two points of view, firstly their construction and secondly because they lend life to inanimate objects. The combination of biology and robots leads to smoother and compliant movement which is more pleasant for us as people. Biologically inspired robots embody non-rigid movement which are made possible by special joints or actuators which give way and can both actively and passively adapt stiffness in different situations. The following paper deals with the construction of a compliant embodiment of a humanoid robot arm, including a five-finger hand with artificial fluidic muscles. The biologically inspired decentralized control architecture allows small units to be responsible for each main movement task. The first section gives a short introduction as to how bionics engineers think and tries to motivate us to build compliant machines. The second section looks at mechanical aspects, limitations and constraints and furthermore describes a human-like robot arm and hand. Section 3 presents the fluidic muscle actuator of the company FESTO. The fourth section describes the decentralized control architecture and the electronic components. The last section concludes the paper while looking at further prospects.