Design, actuation and control of an anthropomorphic robot arm

Current robots are not safe in interaction with humans, especially when chi ldren are involved. Therefore! a four degree-of-freedom robot arm is develo ped which is inherently safe. This is accomplished by giving the arm a comp liant behavior at all times. Firstly, the joint stiffness of the arm is bro ught to zero. Secondly, the arm is supplied with pneumatic artificial muscl es. Their stiffnesses can be adjusted by open loop stiffness control, there by causing the arm to move to new equilibrium positions. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.