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ARMAR Country: Germany Manufacturer: University of Karlsruhe Year: 2001 Height: Variable Weight: 99lbs (45kg) Degrees of Freedom: 25 Webpage Info

Mechanically, the humanoid robot ARMAR consists of an autonomous mobile wheel-driven platform, a body with 4 DOF, a two arm system with a simple gripper and a stereo camera head. The total weight of ARMAR is about 45kg. The mobile platform consists of two active driven wheels fixed in the middle of an octagonal board and another two wheels as passive stabilizers. The maximum velocity of the platform is about 1m/s. The anthropomorphic body of the robot is placed on a mobile platform and supports a rotation of about 330 degree. It can also bended forward, backward and sideways. To adjust the height of the robot, a telescopic joint is included in the body. With this joint the total height of the machine can be increased by 40cm.

This internal research work acts on the basis that a complex robot behavior with similar abilities of a human being is only possible by a permanent interaction between cognition components and the robot systems. Since the robot should support a simple and direct cooperation with humans, the physical structure (dimension, shape and kinematics) of each arm is developed as close as possible to the human arm in terms of segment lengths, axis of rotation and workspace. ARMAR has two redundant arms each having 7 DOF and a length of 65 cm.

The control architecture of ARMAR is hierarchically organized. It is divided in the computer architecture and the software architecture. The computer architecture consists of three levels: the micro-controller level, the PC level and the PC-network level. The micro-controllers are directly coupled with special power electronic cards, which control 4 motors. The micro-controllers are connected via CAN-bus with an internal industrial PC.

This research on ARMAR is carried out at the Forschungszentrum Informatik (FZI) at the University of Karlsruhe. It started in 2001 and is expected to be a 12 year project.

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