Humanoid robots are designed and built to mimic human form and movement. Ultimately, they are meant to resemble the size and physical abilities of a human in order to function in human-oriented environments and to work autonomously but to pose no physical threat to humans. Here, a humanoid robot that resembles a human in appearance and movement is built using powerful actuators paired with gear trains, joint mechanisms, and motor drivers that are all encased in a package no larger than that of the human physique. In this paper, we propose the construction of a humanoid-applicable anthropomorphic 7-DoF arm complete with an 8-DoF hand. The novel mechanical design of this humanoid arm makes it sufficiently compact to be compatible with currently available narrating-model humanoids, and to be sufficiently powerful and flexible to be functional; the number of degrees of freedom endowed in this robotic arm is sufficient for executing a wide range of tasks, including dexterous hand movements. The developed humanoid arm and hand are capable of sensing and interpreting incoming external force using the motor in each joint current without conventional torque sensors. The humanoid arm adopts an algorithm to avoid obstacles and the dexterous hand is capable of grasping objects. The developed robotic arm is suitable for use in an interactive humanoid robot.

Efficient walking is one of the main goals of research on biped robots. Passive Dynamics Based Walking (PDBW) has been proven to be an efficient pattern in numerous previous approaches to 2D biped walking. The goal of this study is to develop a feasible method for the application of PDBW to 3D robots. First a hybrid control method is presented, where a previously proposed two-point-foot walking pattern is employed to generate a PDBW gait in the sagittal plane and, in the frontal plane, a systematic balance control algorithm is applied including online planning of the landing point of the swing leg and feedback control of the stance foot. Then a multi-space planning structure is proposed to implement the proposed method on a 13-link 3D robot. Related kinematics and planning details of the robot are presented. Furthermore, a simulation of the 13-link biped robot verifies that stable and highly efficient walking can be achieved by the proposed control method. In addition, a number of features of the biped walking, including the transient powers and torques of the joints are explored.

In this paper, study of a novel flexible robotic-fin actuated by Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) is presented. The developed robotic fin is capable of implementing various 3-Dimensional (3D) motions, which plays an important role in robot propulsion and maneuverability. Firstly, the morphological and mechanics parameters of a real pectoral fin from a carp are investigated. Secondly, a detailed design of the flexible pectoral fin driven by SMA is presented according to the previous morphological and mechanics analyses. Thirdly, a simplified theoretical model on the SMA fin plate is derived. The thermodynamics of the SMA plate and the relationship between curvature and phase transformation are analyzed. Finally, several simulations and model experiments are conducted according to the previous analyses. The results of the experiments are useful for the control of the robotic fin. The experimental results reveal that the SMA actuated fin ray has a good actuating performance.

The performance of bluespotted rays was emulated in the design of a bioinspired underwater propulsor in the present work. First, the movement of a live bluespotted ray was captured for the swimming mode and useful information to the biomimetic mechanism design. By virtue of the modular and reconfigurable design concept, an undulatory fin propulsion prototype was developed. With a proper experimental set-up, orthogonal experiments were conducted to investigate the effect of various fin design parameters on the propulsion speed, thrust, and power of the fish robot. The controllable fin parameters include frequency, amplitude, wavelength, fin shape, and undulatory mode. The significance of these parameters was also determined by using the variance analysis. The results demonstrate that the designed propulsor, imitating bluespotted rays with large expanded undulatory fins, is able to propel itself by changing various kinematic parameters.