Anthropomorphic biped robot

• Grant number: 22/03921-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: July 01, 2022
• End date: December 31, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Engineering - Biomedical Engineering - Bioengineering
• Principal Investigator: Rafael Traldi Moura
• Grantee: Paloma Rodrigues Rocha
• Host Institution: Escola Politécnica (EP). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Advances in medicine have brought additional years to the population, however, full health until the limit of life expectancy has not yet been reached. Studies carried out by the WHO and other health organizations have identified that approximately 10 years are lived with some disability. Many of these diseases imply the loss of mobility, and to overcome this, there are assistive technologies that seek to improve the quality of life of these people. However, there are still many challenges in this area, which, when circumvented, can optimize the result of these devices. Among them can be mentioned: the low power density of the available actuators, the low efficiency of the mechanisms that demand high energy consumption, the need for biomimicry for better functioning and acceptance by the users and the long design cycle. To overcome these limitations new concepts need to be used. With remote actuation, it is possible to relocate the actuators to positions that provide more comfort to the user and that maintain the anthropomorphy so as not to interfere with the dynamics of the movement. Through the growing field of bioinspiration, it is possible to seek in nature's optimized solutions a maximum efficiency for the bioinspired device. Finally, the long project cycle occurs because in addition to the conventional testing steps in the developed devices, a human testing step is added that takes time to be safely implemented, a device that simulates the human body can be used to accelerate this process. The need to overcome these challenges culminated in the proposal of an anthropomorphic bipedal robot, which will be implemented using the concepts of bioinspiration, anthropomorphy and remote actuation. The proposal is to develop a biomimetic device both in appearance and in functionality, including the ability to reproduce a human gait.