Design and Control of a Social Humanoid Robot - SemuBot’s Hand
Date
2024
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Tartu Ülikool
Abstract
Children can find socialising difficult due to communication problems and a lack of
comprehension of social cues[1], which can lead to isolation, marginalisation, and difficulties
building social bonds. Social robots are an effective solution to this problem[2]. But, social
robots need to be embodied as a humanoid for children to create a will to socialise with the
robot. There are several versions of social humanoid robots. However, most are prohibitively
expensive and difficult to repair because they’re closed-source. SemuBot is one of the
projects that aims to solve these issues and help tackle children's socialisation issues.
Semubot is a student-led, nonprofit organisation. This work pertains to the arm and the
forearm parts for the SemuBot. Natural interactions between machines and humans require
the robot to display body language, requiring robotic hands. However, the hand designs that
are currently available either have expensive and/or noisy actuation systems. Some also have
insufficient degrees of freedom, limiting the number of gestures they can make. In this work,
we present an open-source, modular hand with 7 actuated degrees of freedom. The design
incorporates a bio-inspired tendon-driven actuation mechanism, which uses cost-effective
materials and off-the-shelf components to achieve common hand gestures.
Description
Keywords
Human-robot interaction, Social humanoid robot, Robotic hand design, Open-source robotics, Hand gestures