Research on the design and control of an anthropomorphic waist structure for life support robots

• Published in: Electronics letters Vol. 60; no. 13
• Main Authors: Li, Zufeng, Du, Lei, Ao, Wengang, Qiu, Xuan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 01.07.2024
• Subjects: controllers; design engineering; humanoid robots; trajectory control
• ISSN: 0013-5194; 1350-911X
• DOI: 10.1049/ell2.13244

In the humanoid robots, waist mechanism is an important structure to realize the whole body coordinated movement. This paper proposes a series–parallel mechanism of waist structure, and its kinematics and dynamics characteristics are studied. Based on the dynamic model, a backstepping sliding mode controller is designed to simulate control performance. Under the continuous disturbance force, the stability and accuracy of the mechanism are verified. Compared with the experiment, the results prove that the waist mechanism has the biomimetic spine movements and desired control performance, which can be applied to life support robots in the future. This paper proposes a series–parallel waist mechanism with multi‐link coupling, which can emulate movement of human spine and drive the forward and backward bending with a single power input. A backstepping sliding mode controller is designed to ensure the stability and accuracy of the mechanism, and motion performance is proved by simulation and experiment.