Development and Control of Compliant Hybrid Joints for Human-Symbiotic Mobile Manipulators

Abstract

In this paper, we develop a robot with the ability to secure human safety in humanrobot collisions arising in our living and working environments. The humansymbiotic service robot using compliant hybrid joints realizes human safety, absorbs impact force, and fulfills task. In unexpected or expected collisions with human, the arising impulse force is attenuated effectively by the proposed physical model. Owing to the displacement of the links, several recovery controls have been developed for the endeffector to maintain its desired task position after the collision. The force attenuation property has been verified through collision simulations and experiments in that the capability of the proposed passive arm in overcoming the limitations of active compliance control has been demonstrated.

Keywords

• humanrobot symbiotic environment; safe mobile manipulators; hybrid joints; impact force