Engineering solutions to build an inexpensive humanoid robot based on a distributed control architecture

Building a humanoid robot is a formidable engineering task requiring the combination of mechanical, electrical and software technologies. This paper presents the main steps to design a low cost fully autonomous humanoid platform and the set of solutions proposed. The main scope of the project beneath this paper is to carry out research on control, navigation and perception, whilst offering opportunities for under and pos-graduate students to apply engineering methods and techniques. The main features of the 22 degrees-of-freedom robot include the distributed control architecture, based on a CAN bus, and the modularity at the system level. Although some issues are yet to be addressed, the stage of development is already mature for practical experiments and to obtain the first conclusions on the potential of the proposed solutions.