Abstract:

A novel anthropomorphic design of a robotic leg device featuring a apherical hip joint and linear actuators is presented. The typical large swivel motions at hip and knee arising in the case of flexion and extension of the human leg are implemented through appropriate twoloop transmission mechanism, while the limited range of lateral and longitudinal rotations at the hip is used for furnishing the mechanism with low-cost self-aligning joints in lien of ideal spherical pairs. The paper describes the closed-form, recursive solution of the direct kinematics and the statistics of the mechanism, as well as some results of computer simulations.