We are trying to create an innovative humanoid
which has increased flexibility by imitating the structure of a
human shoulder, especially the shoulder blade. We designed a
flexible shoulder structure for a muscle-driven humanoid robot
which has the following merits, 1) wide range of movement and
flexible shoulder like humans, 2) having the shoulder structure
built on to the outside of the chest, allowing space for a lot of
parts inside the chest. We developed a prototype humanoid robot
named “Blade” which has a musculo-skeletal humanoid torso
with the shoulder blade, driven by motor-actuated tendons. This
paper describes the advantages of the structure of the shoulder
blade, the development of a humanoid with the shoulder blade,
and some experiments showing its range of movement using the
prototype humanoid robot we presented.