Possibility of New Mechanical Engineering Based on Spherical Gear “ABENICS”

Novel 3 D.O.F. spherical gear, “ABENICS”, was invented and developed by Dr. Kazuki Abe who used to be a Ph.D. candidate in Riichiro Tadakuma laboratory at the graduate school of the faculty of engineering of Yamagata University. ABENICS spherical gear has 3 active degrees of freedom that are perpendicular to each other and cross at one point. It also has infinite motion range around pitch, roll, and yaw axis. It has huge possibility to be adapted to various industries. In this paper, the fundamental principle and mechanism of ABENICS spherical gear are explained. The metallic ABENICS spherical gear is also presented, and its application as a joint mechanism for a humanoid robotic arm is introduced. The monopole gear was fabricated according to the calculation of the virtual milling with the geometric shape of the base spherical gear. This base spherical gear works as a virtual milling tool to realize the profile of the monopole gear with the same concentric pole structure as the spherical gear. With this design, the monopole gear can mesh with the spherical gear without any limitation in their motion range.