Quantifying Anthropomorphism of Robot Arms

In this paper we introduce an index for the quantification of anthropomorphism of robot arms. The index is defined as a weighted sum of specific metrics which evaluate the similarities between the human and robot arm workspaces, providing a normalized score between 0 (non-anthropomorphic artifacts) and 1 (humanidentical artifacts). The human arm workspaces were extracted using data reported in anthropometry studies. The formulation is general enough to allow utilization in various applications, by adjusting the weighting factors according to the specifications of each study. The proposed methodology can be used for assessing the humanlikeness of existing robot arms as well as to provide specifications for the design of new anthropomorphic robots and prosthetic devices. To assess the efficiency of the proposed methods a comparative analysis between five kinematically different robot arm models is conducted and simulated paradigms are presented.