UNCORRECTE Abstract—The development of robotic cognition and the advancement of understanding of human cognition form two of the current greatest challenges in robotics and neuroscience, respectively.The RobotCub project aims to develop an embodied robotic child (iCub) with the physical (height 90 cm and mass less than 23 kg) and ultimately cognitive abilities of a 2.5-year-old human child. The iCub will be a freely available open system which can be used by scientists in all cognate disciplines from developmental psychology to epigenetic robotics to enhance understanding of cognitive systems through the study of cognitive development. The iCub will be open both in software, but more importantly in all aspects of the hardware and mechanical design. In this paper the design of the mechanisms and structures forming the basic ‘body’ of the iCub are described. The papers considers kinematic structures dynamic design criteria, actuator specification and selection, and detailed mechanical and electronic design. The paper concludes with tests of the performance of sample joints, and comparison of these results with the design requirements and simulation projects.21237
Keywords: Humanoid; cognition; mechanical design; force sensing.
1. INTRODUCTION
The development of human-like machines has its basis in ancient mythology where
it combines many desirable features, including natural human-like locomotion,
and human-friendly design and behavior. However, it is only within the past
30–40 years with the developments in the core enabling technologies (biped walking
UNCORRECTED  PROOF
control, mechatronics, computer technology) and advancements in complementary
fields such as biomechanics and neuroscience that multi-degree-of-freedom (d.o.f.)
humanoid robots have become technically viable. Important advantages of the
technology have been shown by pioneering robots such as H6, H7 [1],P2 [2, 3],
ASIMO [4], JOHNNIE and LOLA [5, 6], WABIAN-2 [7],LUCY [8],HRPand
HRP-2 [9, 10],Cog [11, 12], pneumatic bipeds [13], the flexible spine KENTA and
KENJI [14, 15], SAIKA [16] and PINO [17].
With these developments in robotics, computing and neuroscientific understand-
ing has come an increased capacity to build a humanoid robotic platform that will
enhance robotic intelligence, programming and learning. Yet, in spite of this growth
in humanoid technology there are still significant gaps in the robotic understanding
of the cognitive needs for machine intelligence, and equally profound gaps in neu-
roscientific understanding of the function of the human brain and it how can create
a cognitive being.
The RobotCub project is a research initiative dedicated to the realization of
embodied cognitive systems [18, 19] and the creation of an advanced robotic
platform for neuroscientific study. Its goals are:
(i) Creation of an open hardware/software humanoid robotic platform for research
in embodied cognition. This is the iCub.
(ii) Advancing our neural understanding of cognitive systems by exploiting this
platform in the study of the development of cognitive capabilities in humanoid
robots.
At the heart of the RobotCub philosophy on cognition is the belief that manipula-
tion plays a fundamental role in the development of cognitive capability. As many
of these basic skills are developed during the formative years of growth, RobotCub
aims at testing and developing these paradigms through the creation of a child-like
humanoid. The iCub has as its aim the replication of the physical and cognitive
abilities of a 2.5-year-old baby. This ‘baby’ robot will act in cognitive scenarios,
performing tasks useful to learning, and interacting with the environment and hu-
mans [17]. The small (90 cm tall), compact size (less than 23 kg and fitting within
the volume of a child) and high number (53) of d.o.f. combined with the capac- 机器人平台英文文献和中文翻译:http://www.751com.cn/fanyi/lunwen_13356.html