University of Tehran Surena IV

DESCRIPTION

Surena IV is the fourth generation of the University of Tehran's humanoid programme and the one that made the series internationally known. It stands 170 cm, weighs 68 kg and has 43 degrees of freedom: three in the head, seven in each arm, six in each hand, two at the waist and six in each leg. The hands are the visible advance over Surena III. With six degrees of freedom each and force control, the robot grips and manipulates objects rather than simply posing, and it can imitate a person's actions through whole-body motion. It walks on uneven ground and recovers from a push, at a modest 0.7 km/h. CAST designed the actuation itself: 21 custom actuators combining harmonic drives with frameless flat high-torque motors and both incremental and absolute encoders, plus 10 mini and 12 micro servos for the smaller joints. Topology optimisation, an AZ91 magnesium alloy, aluminium and carbon-fibre core structure and a 3D-printed outer shell keep the mass down. Sensing runs to cameras, a gyroscope, accelerometers and an IMU, six-axis force-torque sensors, motor encoders, current sensors, foot contact sensors and a microphone. Onboard computing is an Intel Core i7 at 2.8 GHz with a GTX 1060 GPU alongside an FPGA and microcontrollers, the FPGA giving real-time joint control. The robot detects and follows faces and objects, and both recognises and produces speech.

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