PTC (The Product Development Company® of Needham, Massachusetts) is reporting that one of its software products has been selected by Waseda University’s Sugano Laboratory as “the main engineering tool for the development of a human-symbiotic robot.” We did a little search on Twendy-One, as the lab’s project and its offspring is called. The robot is not new: Gizmodo has run a post about it more than a year ago. According to the PTC press release, Sugano Lab is continuing to improve the robot’s features and safety, and hopes to mass release the Twendy-One into the real world, such as hospitals or other care facilities.
More about the robot, taken from its product page and the press release:
“We must be very careful about the appearance and the materials used when we design the outer shell of a human-symbiotic robot because the robot should never hurt the humans or the surrounding environment on its contact,” says Professor Sugano about the design requirements enabled by the Pro/ENGINEER Piping and Cabling Extension. “Also, the appearance is very important from an affinity standpoint. Exposing many cables outside the robot’s body shell could create major problems, and therefore, we must place all cables inside the shell. Furthermore, cables must be compact in order not to interfere with moving parts. We could use piping or solid models to define cable models, but with the specialized cabling capabilities in Pro/ENGINEER, we can define the properties of the cables and create cable models while we see how the cables behave…”
The size and the movable range of TWENDY-ONE arm and hand are designed equally to those of the average adult female. The arm has seven degrees of freedom with one redundancy and the four-finger-hand has thirteen degrees of freedom in total to manipulate an object dexterously. As the mobility is an important rule of the service application, an omni-directional mobile mechanism is introduced to TWENDY-ONE. This mechanism enables the robot to easily follow and adapt to external and involuntary force applied from human. The trunk of WENDY-ONE has four degrees of freedom so that the hand can reach the floor to pick up an object and to wipe off the floor. The appearance is designed from the point of view of the human-friendliness. The outer shell is designed to cover all the wire harnesses and it also has the function of shock absorption…
TWENDY-ONE is a sophisticated human-symbiotic-robot which equips all the functions described above. The special feature of TWENDY-ONE is the combination function of the dexterity with passivity and the high-power output. TWENDY-ONE equips high output actuators with the simple mechanical passive impedance mechanism. When TWENDY-ONE manipulates an object with various shape, it is easy for TWENDY-ONE to adapt to the object by passivity to absorb external force generated by the positioning deviation. In the same way, TWENDY-ONE can adapt to human motion and hold a human. As a result, TWENDY-ONE can manipulate an object dexterously as well as support a human.
The size and the movable range of TWENDY-ONE arm and hand are designed equally to those of the average adult female. The arm has seven degrees of freedom with one redundancy and the four-finger-hand has thirteen degrees of freedom in total to manipulate an object dexterously. As the mobility is an important rule of the service application, an omni-directional mobile mechanism is introduced to TWENDY-ONE. This mechanism enables the robot to easily follow and adapt to external and involuntary force applied from human. The trunk of WENDY-ONE has four degrees of freedom so that the hand can reach the floor to pick up an object and to wipe off the floor. The appearance is designed from the point of view of the human-friendliness. The outer shell is designed to cover all the wire harnesses and it also has the function of shock absorption…Video from Fuji TV…
Product page: TWENDY-ONE @ Sugano Laboratory, WASEDA University…
Press release: Waseda University Uses PTC Pro/ENGINEER to Develop a “Human-Symbiotic” Robot…