Design, Analysis and Experimental Research of Humanoid Head Robot

At present, humanoid head robots are mostly driven by motors, which have the disadvantages of occupying large space and being relatively heavy. In this paper, lightweight intelligent material actuators are employed to design the structure of humanoid head robots and realize different facial expressions. In the eye mechanism, two eyeballs that can be individually controlled are designed to increase the flexibility of eye movement. The whole head adopts a variety of driving methods such as motor, Shape Memory Alloy (SMA), and Ionic Polymer Metal Composite (IPMC) for hybrid driving, reducing the weight of the robot head. The modular structure is designed to facilitate robot maintenance. The transmission performance of each structure is analyzed and the corresponding motion model is established. Finally, experiments verify that the designed humanoid head robot can complete common human head movements, and can realize 8 common human facial expressions.