Semi-active compliant robot enabling collision safety for human robot interaction

Human robot interaction (HRI) tasks requires robots to have safe sharing of work space and to demonstrate adaptable compliant behavior enabling eminent collision safety as well as maintaining high position accuracy. Robot compliance control normally can be achieved by using active compliance control of actuators based on various sensor data. Alternatively, passive devices allow controllable compliance motion but usually are mechanically complex. We proposed a unique method using semi-active compliant actuation mechanism having magneto-rheological (MR) fluid based actuator that introduces reconfigurable compliance characteristics into the robot joints. This enables high intrinsic safety coming from fluid mechanics as well as, it offers simpler interaction control strategy compared to other concurrent approaches. In this studies, we have described three essential modes of motions required for physical human system interaction. Furthermore, we have demonstrated robot collision safety in terms of static collision and experimentally validates the performance of robot manipulator enabling safe human robot interaction.