An overview of humanoid robots technologies

International audienceHumanoid robots are challenging mechatronics structures with several interesting features. Choosing a humanoid robot to develop applications or pursue research in a given direction might be difficult due to the strong interdependence of the technical aspects. This paper aims at giving a general description of this interdependence and highlight the lessons learned from the impressive works conducted in the past decade. The reader will find in the annex a table synthesizing the characteristics of the most relevant humanoid robots. Without focusing on a specific application we consider two main classes of humanoid robots: the ones dedicated to industrial application and the ones dedicated to human-robot interaction. The technical aspects are described in a way which illustrates the humanoid robots bridging the gap between these two classes. Finally this paper tries to make a synthesis on recent technological developments 1. 1 Mechanical structure 1.1 General design principal Humanoid robots are complex mechatronic systems. As such, it is necessary to consider the the mechanical structure, the computational system and the algorithms as a whole and for a given application. The robot's size, weight and strength are important factors when designing its structure. Let us consider two general classes of applications: physical performances while doing motion generation and validation of biological and/or cognitive models. The ATLAS robot from Boston Dynamics is an example of the first category, while the Kenshiro robot [45] from Tokyo University is an example of the second category