Joint module with passive compliance for dual arm rescue robot

Nowadays, there is a widespread demand for applying the robot system into the various fields. Especially, robot can substitute human and perform the dangerous activity such as search and rescue in the battle field or disaster. We are developing the dual arm robot which can be adapted to the rescue robot with tracked mobile platform. Therefore, it has to be designed to have the protection mechanism against the impact from the environment and to have the safe human robot interaction. In the paper, the actuating joint module is design to absorb impact force with spring-damper material and to overcome high impact force with a worm gear. It is important to identify the characteristic of the joint module, because the spring-damper makes the joint module to be the flexible system. We analyzed the characteristic of the joint module through the simulation and the experiment. In the future, the joint module will be applied to the robot arm and its characteristic can be used in the flexible system control.