Title: Enhanced safety with joint compliance control of Pneumatic Muscles

Authors: Tae-Yong Choi, Chang-Hyun Kim, Ju-Jang Lee

Addresses: Division of Electrical Engineering, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, KAIST, 373-1, Guseong-dong, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon, Korea. ' Division of Electrical Engineering, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, KAIST, 373-1, Guseong-dong, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon, Korea. ' Division of Electrical Engineering, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, KAIST, 373-1, Guseong-dong, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon, Korea

Abstract: The safety of humans working with robots is an important issue. Many studies have addressed related methods, but fundamental limits to meet required safety have been met owing to the absence of compliance in the robot actuators. Pneumatic Muscle (PM) is considered to be a basic actuator and offers the advantage of intrinsic elasticity to achieve the joint compliance. Here, the joint compliance actuated by PM is actively utilised to enhance human safety during collisions. To this end, the authors present a novel approach to control compliance and position independently without affecting on the each other|s performance using PMs.

Keywords: pneumatic muscles; human robot interaction; joint compliance control; safety; robot actuators.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMMS.2010.033190

International Journal of Mechatronics and Manufacturing Systems, 2010 Vol.3 No.3/4, pp.307 - 326

Published online: 10 May 2010 *

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