Abstract: The current status and development of the mecha-nismarchitecture of humanoid robots are summarized and the characteristics of the serial architectures used universally in current humanoid robots at home and abroad are analyzed; The structures of human body is simply introduced and joints, the constitution of limbs and its movement are investigated and simplified. The simplified architecture of human body is set up. Using basic movement units, human architecture as the proto-type, based on the viewpoints of bionics-starting from structure, movement and function, the mechanism architectures of hu-manoid robot are constructed by means of equivalent mecha-nisms of joints and combination between them under introduc-ing parallel mechanism at the joints with multiple DOFs. Some parallel, compound (series-parallel) mechanism architectures for humanoid robot limbs and global compound mechanism architectures are gotten. The advantages of this class architec-tures are: The movement of the off-end of limbs are more flexi-ble, smooth andconsecutive; Output status of mechanism and the ability of maneuver and operation of humanoid robot is improved; The load capacity, stiffness, motion stability of hu-manoid robot are enhanced. The works done here enrich the mechanism architectures of humanoid robots. This is significant foundation in theory and a new choice for the design of human-oid robots.

Key words: Bio-mechanism, Compound mechanism architecture, Humanoid robot