The humanoid robot, as a frontier exploration in the field of technology, have developed rapidly in recent years, and harmonic gear drives play a crucial role in the development of humanoid robots.
The development of humanoid robots aims to achieve more flexible and intelligent movements to better adapt to various complex work and life scenarios. The emergence of harmonic gear drives provides critical technical support for achieving this goal.
Harmonic gear drives have the characteristics of being small in size and lightweight. For humanoid robots, this means that they can reduce overall size and weight while maintaining functionality, making them more flexible and portable. For example, according to relevant data, the robot reducer products of WLY enjoy a vast market space, and their harmonic gear drives feature a compact design that guarantees the flexibility of humanoid robots.
Additionally, harmonic gear drives can provide high gear ratios and torque transmission. They can convert the high-speed low-torque output of a motor into low-speed high-torque, meeting the precise control needs of humanoid robot joint movements. This characteristic is particularly critical in simulating intricate human movements in parts such as arms, wrists, and fingers.
High precision and stability are also significant advantages of harmonic gear drives. Humanoid robots require a high degree of precision and stability when performing tasks to ensure smooth and accurate movements. Through its unique operating principle, harmonic gear drive can provide very stable and precise motion control.
For instance, in some high-end humanoid robots, motors are often combined with harmonic gear drives to achieve high-precision low-speed output, effectively reducing mechanical errors and enhancing the motion control precision of the robot.
Harmonic gear drives provide key technical support for the development of humanoid robots, driving them towards greater intelligence and flexibility.
Unique Structure and Principle
Harmonic gear drives consist of a wave generator, a flex spline, and a circular spline. Their working principle is to use the wave generator to elastically deform the flex spline, achieving tooth engagement that results in low-speed high-torque output. When the wave generator is inserted into the inner circle of the flex spline, the flex spline becomes elliptical due to the shape of the wave generator.
At this point, the teeth at the long axis ends of the flex spline fully engage with the circular spline, while those at the short axis ends are completely disengaged. As the wave generator continues to rotate, the continuous phase change of the long and short axes of the flex spline causes its deformation to be a continuous sinusoidal wave around the circumference, thus achieving low-speed rotation in the opposite direction relative to the fixed circular spline.
Significant Advantages in Multiple Aspects
Harmonic gear drives feature small size and lightweight. Compared to general gear reducers, when the output torque is the same, their volume can be reduced by 2/3, and weight can be reduced by 1/2. For example, in humanoid robots, small and lightweight harmonic gear drives can make the robots more flexible and adaptable to various complex work environments.
The large gear ratio is also a notable advantage of harmonic gear drives. The single-stage harmonic transmission ratio range is 70 - 320, and in some devices, it can reach 1000. The multi-stage transmission ratio can exceed 30000. This makes harmonic gear drives perform exceptionally well in applications requiring large reduction ratios, such as industrial robots and CNC machine tools.
Moreover, harmonic gear drives also have high transmission precision, simple and compact structure, easy installation, high load-bearing capacity, the ability to transmit motion into sealed spaces, high transmission efficiency, and smooth movement. When the gear accuracy level is the same, the transmission error is only about 1/4 of that of ordinary cylindrical gear transmissions.
Additionally, due to only having three basic components and coaxial input and output, the structure is simple and compact, making installation convenient. Plus, the harmonic transmission involves many teeth meshing simultaneously, providing high load-bearing capacity. The dual-wave transmission can have teeth engagement of over 30% of the total number of teeth. The flex spline is made of high-strength materials, with face contact between teeth, further enhancing load-bearing capability.
These advantages of harmonic gear drives make them widely used in fields such as robotics, CNC machine tools, photovoltaic equipment, medical instruments, semiconductor equipment, and aerospace.
