Inverse Kinematics and Workspace Analysis of a 3 DOF Flexible Parallel Humanoid Neck Robot

To mimic the human neck’s three degree-of-freedom (DOF) rotation motion, we present a novel bio-inspired cable driven parallel robot with a flexible spine. Although there exists many parallel robotic platform that can mimic the human neck motion, most of them have only two DOF, with the yaw motion being actuated separately. The presented flexible parallel humanoid neck robot employs a column compression spring as the main body of cervical vertebra and four cables as neck muscles to connect the base and moving platform. The pitch and roll movements of moving platform are realized by the two dimensional lateral bending motion of the flexible spring, and a bearing located at the top of the compression spring and embedded in the moving platform is used to achieve the yaw motion of the moving platform. By combing the force and torque balance equations with the lateral bending statics of the spring, inverse kinematics and optimizing the cable placements to minimize the actuating cable force are investigated. Moreover, the translational workspace corresponding to pitch and roll movements and rotational workspace corresponding to yaw movement are analyzed with positive cable tension constraint. Extensive simulations were performed and demonstrated the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed inverse kinematics and workspace analysis of the novel 3 DOF flexible parallel humanoid neck robot.