Abstract
The efficient and stable walking of humanoid robots is a key and challenging issue in the study of humanoid robots. As the part that directly contacts with the outside world, the foot needs to have strong shock absorption ability to reduce the joint torque at the moment of contact with the ground, which can not only protect the mechanical structure, but also improve the motor efficiency. To improve the shock absorption performance during the locomotion of humanoid robots, this study presents a novel humanoid robot foot pad with a lattice structure. The unit cell of the lattice structure is a rhombic dodecahedron, which possesses good energy absorption capability. Quasi-static compression and impact simulations of the lattice foot pad and the robot foot were conducted in Abaqus. The simulation results indicate that compared to the solid foot pad, the foot pad designed with rhombic dodecahedral unit cells can reduce the impact force by 82%, providing better shock absorption capacity. To further verify the cushioning effect of the foot pad installed on the robot, A lattice foot pad was produced by 3D printing technology and fitted on the foot of a single-legged robot. A single-legged robot drop test was conducted, showing that when drop from a height of 24 cm above the ground, the maximum knee joint torque of the single-legged robot with the lattice foot pad decreased by about 22% compared to that without the foot pad.
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Acknowledgment
This work is supported by “Leading Goose” R&D Program of Zhejiang (No. 2023C01177), Key Research Project of Zhejiang Lab (No. G2021NB0AL03) and Youth Foundation Project of Zhejiang Lab (No. K2023NB0AA01). This research is also supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 52205076).
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Zhang, L. et al. (2023). A Humanoid Robot Foot with a Lattice Structure for Absorbing Ground Impact Forces. In: Yang, H., et al. Intelligent Robotics and Applications. ICIRA 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 14270. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-6492-5_33
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-6492-5_33
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