In this paper, we discuss the integration of "mechanical softness" into the humanoid robot mechanisms design. The mechanical softness include such requirements as human-like high mobility and human-like sensitive compliance. We focus on theshoulder mechanism in this paper, and propose a new parallel mechanism to integrate the two requirements. The mechanism is named the Cybernetic Shoulder and possesses three degrees-of-freedom. The nature of motion curves of human shoulder, and the designand development of the cybernetic shoulder are to be described with the computation issue of kinematics. The integration of compliance into the parallel mechanism is also discussed, and its experimental evaluation is made.
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