Exploring the Advantages of Globoid Worm Gears in Humanoid Robotics Post-pandemic, the world has seen rises in employment vacancies for various reasons. To combat this extreme shortage—companies and factories have turned to technology to find an answer to this.
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In the past couple of months, the robotics industries have been showing an enormous uptick in humanoid robots. With the current trends of the robotics and automation world, there is a massive pull toward humanoid robotics. Tesla has displayed their 2nd generation humanoid robot, Optimus, and BMW announced that they will be implementing Figure's humanoid robots in their production lines. Most factories have already moved towards automation with robot arms, and the issue seen with this is their lack of variety in applicable tasks. |
However, engineers and robotics manufacturers are in a perpetual struggle with performance, efficiency, and reliability. Dynamic and movable robots have non-negotiable parts—gearboxes being one of them. Harmonic, planetary, and cycloidal drives are currently commonly used for robot joints. On the other hand, they are costly, questionable effectiveness, fragile, have low output torque, and lead times are long. Especially now, considering the demand for these reducers has increased substantially, supply has difficulty catching up. Worm gears are not typically used or seen in robotics as they are considered to have low efficiency and low accuracy but are thought to have their places in industrial machinery—but due to the compact design and output torque, it has been making appearances in the robotics world. We've been seeing worm gears being used in medical robots, AGV/AMRs, and now in humanoid robots. |
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In parts of the humanoid body that require intricate abilities yet higher transmissions, such as a hand, is an excellent use for worm gears. Tesla's Optimus makes use of six worm gears (Finger Clutch Drives) in each hand, 2 for the thumb and 4 for the fingers. |
EasternGear's Globoid Worm Gear is an upgraded version of regular worm gear. It has higher output torque, better self-locking mechanisms, and can be made to be even more compact than regular worm gears. The compactness also plays an important role in the improvement of impact resistance. While in regular worm gears, the worm shaft sits tangentially to the wheel, in globoid worm gears the shaft envelops the arc of the wheel—thus the name “double enveloping worm gear”.
| Whether human or robot, knee joints are vital to the longevity of the lifespan of the entire product. The knees holding up most of the upper body's weight requires immense stability, durability and shock resistance. Placing EasternGear's Globoid Worm Gears in the knee joints of robots' knees or exo-prosthetic knees for humans could also be an interesting idea. |
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