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US 2004/0193318 A1Published application
Actuator unit and multi-axis robot
AssigneeSony Corporation
InventorKatsuhisa Ito
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An actuator unit is applied to joints, each movable along two or more axes, such as a hip joint, a knee joint, or an ankle joint of a legged mobile robot. All the moving portions of a power-supply and control-signal harness are accommodated inside the actuator unit, and an electric contact of the actuator unit is on the free end of an output shaft so that a multi-axis robot is easily achieved. The actuator unit has two orthogonal shafts, and is useful to robots having various kinds of joint structures.
Claims20
An actuator unit comprising:
- two motors;
- output shafts drivingly connected to rotors of the motors;
- a housing covering the motors;
- free ends of the output shafts being exposed to the exterior of the housing;
- and
- electric contacts on the free ends of the output shafts for electric power and a control signal.
3 more elements
An actuator unit comprising:
- a first container accommodating a first motor, the first container having a first bearing portion to support the first motor;
- a second container accommodating a second motor, the second container having a second bearing portion to support the second motor, an output shaft of the second motor being substantially orthogonal to the first bearing;
- wherein the output shafts of the first motor and the second motor are substantially orthogonally disposed.
A multi-axis robot comprising:
- at least two actuator units functioning as joints having high degrees of freedom, each actuator unit comprising two motors output shafts of which are orthogonally disposed and have electric contacts on the free ends of the output shafts.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.