New visco-elastic mechanism design for flexible joint manipulator

Taisuke Sugaiwa*, Hiroyasu Iwata, Shigeki Sugano

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

11 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

We describe a space-efficient visco-elastic mechanism design for a small lightweight flexible joint of a human-symbiotic robot arm. Human-symbiotic robots that can provide daily life support will be required in houses, offices, facilities, and other places. Since they will often make physical contact with humans, their arms should have mechanical flexible joints to absorb the contact force and follow the human's motion. Our design has two coaxial rotary elements: a torsion bar made from GUMMETAL and a rotary disk damper with the output hole at its center. These two elements are combined in parallel and coaxially, making our design highly space-efficient. This paper presents the specifications of the shear elastic characteristics of GUMMETAL measured in experiments using 1DOF (degree-of-freedom) test equipment. The results confirm that its shear elastic modulus is linear and has a small elastic hysteresis loop and our mechanism can provide the advantage for the robot servo control. Compared with the conventional design, our design can make a smaller lighter flexible joint.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 2008 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics, AIM 2008
Pages235-240
Number of pages6
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2008 Sept 30
Event2008 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics, AIM 2008 - Xi'an, China
Duration: 2008 Aug 22008 Aug 5

Publication series

NameIEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics, AIM

Conference

Conference2008 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics, AIM 2008
Country/TerritoryChina
CityXi'an
Period08/8/208/8/5

Keywords

  • GUMMETAL
  • Human-symbiotic robot
  • Space-efficient viscoelastic mechanism

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Control and Systems Engineering
  • Software
  • Computer Science Applications
  • Electrical and Electronic Engineering

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