THE DESIGN OF THE iCub HUMANOID ROBOT

Abstract

This article describes the hardware design of the iCub humanoid robot. The iCub is an opensource humanoid robotic platform designed explicitly to support research in embodied cognition. This paper covers the mechanical and electronic design of the¯rst release of the robot. A series upgrades developed for the second version of the robot (iCub2), which are aimed at the improvement of the mechanical and sensing performance, are also described.

Social humanoid robot SARA: development of the wrist mechanism

“…Wrist with 1 DOF -movements about the yaw or pitch axis, are found in Affetto [11], Ever-1 [12], EveR-2 [13], CB 2 [14], ASIMO [15], HRP-4C [16] etc., wrist with 2 DOFs -movements about the yaw and pitch axes, are found in iCub [17], Robonaut 2 [18], Albert HUBO [19], AILA [20], TORO [21], KIBO [22], HUBO [23], WABIAN-2 [24], KOBIAN [25], ARMAR-III [26], SURALP [27] etc., while the wrist with 3 DOFs -movements about the yaw, roll and pitch axes, are found in James [28], Justin [29], Romeo [30], BERT2 [31], WE-4RII [32], HRP-4 [33] etc. The wrist mechanism of these robots usually consists of rigid and low backlash mechanisms that are interconnected -harmonic drive, cable-driven mechanism, spatial linkage mechanism, spindle drive, low backlash gears etc.…”

The iCub Software Architecture: Evolution and Lessons Learned

“…The iCub is an open humanoid robot platform that was developed for research in cognitive systems Parmiggiani et al, 2012). It has 53 joints actuated with brushless and DC motors.…”

Beaming the Gaze of a Humanoid Robot

“…The standard iCub robot [1] has 53 actuated degrees of freedom including 3 angles for the elevation, azimuth and tilt of the neck and 3 angles for the elevation, azimuth and vergence of the eyes that embed Dragonfly cameras. The inner head houses an on-board PC104 controller, the electronic boards to control the electric motors, a gyro sensor and two camera boards.…”