Archie is a humanoid robot

Humanoid robot

A humanoid robot or an anthropomorphic robot is a robot with its overall appearance, based on that of the human body, allowing interaction with made-for-human tools or environments. In general humanoid robots have a torso with a head, two arms and two legs, although some forms of humanoid robots...

, developed in Vienna University of Technology

Vienna University of Technology

Vienna University of Technology is one of the major universities in Vienna, the capital of Austria. Founded in 1815 as the "Imperial-Royal Polytechnic Institute" , it currently has about 26,200 students , 8 faculties and about 4,000 staff members...

 (TUWIEN) in Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

 and University of Manitoba

University of Manitoba

The University of Manitoba , in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, is the largest university in the province of Manitoba. It is Manitoba's most comprehensive and only research-intensive post-secondary educational institution. It was founded in 1877, making it Western Canada’s first university. It placed...

 in Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

. The development of Archie started in 2004 at theInstitute of Handling Robots and Devices (IHRT) under supervision of Professor Peter Kopacek. Archie is in class a Teen size Humanoid and is over 120 cm tall. Lower body of Archie is designed and driven using brushless motors

Brushless DC electric motor

Brushless DC motors also known as electronically commutated motors are electric motors powered by direct-current electricity and having electronic commutation systems, rather than mechanical commutators and brushes...

 that are able to provide 50 Nm moment after the gearbox output. For Archie's joints Harmonic drives are employed in order to decreasing the size of the design and increasing the efficiency of the Robot. Each joint is controller individually and can provide a high performance motion control

Motion control

Motion control is a sub-field of automation, in which the position or velocity of machines are controlled using some type of device such as a hydraulic pump, linear actuator, or an electric motor, generally a servo...

. All the joints are connected to central control unit using a customized high speed network. Archie's central controller unit is called Spinal system which is designed to control the whole robot as well as maitaining the balance of the robot. For the balance in the robot, the "Spinal system" uses the feedback from the joints and the data from an inertial measurement unit

Inertial measurement unit

An inertial measurement unit, or IMU, is an electronic device that measures and reports on a craft's velocity, orientation, and gravitational forces, using a combination of accelerometers and gyroscopes. IMUs are typically used to maneuver aircraft, including UAVs, among many others, and...

 (IMU). Electronic design and implementation of Archie is done by Ahmad Byagowi as his PhD thesis required project.

Control System

The control system of Archie is based on a hierarchy structure with a central controller. The central controller which entitles an HydraXC50 (Xilinx Virtex 4 FPGA) is designed to run a Real Time Linux (RT-Linux) beside some application based hardware. For instance, the communication (back and forth) between the central controller and the joints of the robot is designated as a task for the application based hardware. As a rough explanation, the communication hardware used in the central controller acts like a graphic card. Detailed explanation can be found in related reference.