Anthropomorphic Low-Inertia High-Stiffness Manipulator for High-Speed Safe Interaction

In this paper, a manipulator is proposed for safe human-robot interaction at high speed. The manipulator has both low mass and inertia and high stiffness and strength. It is basically a cable-driven manipulator; nevertheless, by using a unique lightweight tension-amplification mechanism, the manipulator retains high stiffness and strength. The joint stiffness, which is strongly related to the motion control performance, is amplified by the quadratic order. Both 1-degree of freedom (DOF) and 3-DOF joint mechanisms using the tension-amplification mechanism are presented and combined to develop a 7-DOF anthropomorphic manipulator named LIMS. The mass and inertia beyond the shoulder were 2.24 kg and 0.599 kg.m(2), respectively, which are lower than those of a human. The stiffness of the developed elbow joint was 1410 N.m/rad, which is approximately seven times higher than that of a human. Considering the ratio of stiffness to inertia, the manipulator is expected to show a control performance that is comparable to those of conventional industrial manipulators. Comprehensive experiments, including joint stiffness tests and high-speed interaction tests, were conducted to verify the feasibility of the developed manipulator.