A bio-inspired condylar hinge joint for mobile robots

This paper presents a bio-inspired design of hinge joint for mobile robots based on the human knee joint. The joint mimics the curved profiles of the femur and tibia bones and also mimics the four-bar motion of the cruciate ligaments. The bio-inspired design has the same desirable features of a natu...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in2011 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems pp. 4042 - 4047
Main Authors Etoundi, Appolinaire C., Vaidyanathan, Ravi, Burgess, Stuart C.
Format Conference Proceeding
LanguageEnglish
Published IEEE 01.09.2011
Subjects
bio-inspired hinge joint
Cruciate ligaments
Fasteners
four-bar mechanism
Humans
Joints
Knee
Ligaments
moving centre of rotation
Robots
Torque
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Summary:This paper presents a bio-inspired design of hinge joint for mobile robots based on the human knee joint. The joint mimics the curved profiles of the femur and tibia bones and also mimics the four-bar motion of the cruciate ligaments. The bio-inspired design has the same desirable features of a natural knee joint including compactness, a moving centre of rotation, high strength, high stiffness and locking in the upright position. These characteristics are important for mobile robots where there are often tight space and mass limitations. Numerical analysis and experimental tests have shown that the new hinge joint has superior performance to a pin jointed hinge in terms of stiffness and mechanical advantage.
ISBN:1612844545
9781612844541
ISSN:2153-0858
2153-0866
DOI:10.1109/IROS.2011.6094924