Design and Control of a Social Humanoid Robot - SemuBot’s Hand

Abstract

Children can find socialising difficult due to communication problems and a lack of comprehension of social cues[1], which can lead to isolation, marginalisation, and difficulties building social bonds. Social robots are an effective solution to this problem[2]. But, social robots need to be embodied as a humanoid for children to create a will to socialise with the robot. There are several versions of social humanoid robots. However, most are prohibitively expensive and difficult to repair because they’re closed-source. SemuBot is one of the projects that aims to solve these issues and help tackle children's socialisation issues. Semubot is a student-led, nonprofit organisation. This work pertains to the arm and the forearm parts for the SemuBot. Natural interactions between machines and humans require the robot to display body language, requiring robotic hands. However, the hand designs that are currently available either have expensive and/or noisy actuation systems. Some also have insufficient degrees of freedom, limiting the number of gestures they can make. In this work, we present an open-source, modular hand with 7 actuated degrees of freedom. The design incorporates a bio-inspired tendon-driven actuation mechanism, which uses cost-effective materials and off-the-shelf components to achieve common hand gestures.