Development of a passive type dance partner robot

In this paper, a passive type dance partner robot referred to as PDR (passive dance robot) is presented to realize ballroom dances in cooperation with a human. PDR is developed based on the concept of passive robotics. Compared to the active type robot actuated by servo motors, the passive type robot can guarantee higher level of safety, since this kind of robot moves passively based on the force applied by human operator without using the actuators, thus unexpected motion due to out of control will not happen. In this paper, the locations of the wheels are determined by analyzing the trajectories of the male dancerpsilas feet. The dynamic manipulability is utilized to analyze the acceleration capability of PDR; the best orientations of the wheels will be determined by maximizing the ratio of the minimum and maximum radius of the dynamic manipulability ellipsoid. Finally a prototype is built, which consists of three with Omni-directional wheels with servo brakes and on-board computer system.