A Tendon Driven Robot Eye Prototype

Fig 1: The three dimensional CAD model of the bio-inspired robot eye.

The MACEYE-II is a bio-inspired stereo-vision robot with the mechanics and motion characteristics of a human eye. This prototype of a robot eye must emulate the mechanical structure and the motions of a human eye with a comparable working range. The inspiration for the design obviously came from the study of the anatomy of the eye in humans and primates. The human eye is driven by six extra-ocular muscle-tendons (EOMs), our prototype uses only four tendons (equivalent to the four recti muscles), however these are sufficient to generate motions similar to the typical saccadic movements (i.e. sudden changes of the fixation direction of the eye) observed in animals and humans. The robot has been designed by assuming that the eyeball is a sphere with three rotational degrees of freedom about its centre, and the actuation system driving the eyeball is a combination of linear motors (FAULHABER LM0830-01-40), springs and tendons. These four motors are controlled by four industrial drives (FAULHABER MCLM3003/06C) and the control signals are generated by the High level control system, which runs on a PC with a Real-Time Operating System (xPCTraget).

Click here to see a demo video.