Control method for arm of soft humanoid robot

This paper describes how to control an arm of the soft humanoid robot developed at Artificial Life and Robotics Laboratory at ALife Robotics Cooperation Ltd., Oita, Japan. Several artificial muscles are arranged in the arm based on the arrangement of human arm muscles. The movement of arm is controlled by the combination of extension and compression of artificial muscles connected to electro-pneumatic controller. The developed control law for muscles of the arm is nonlinear control because the artificial muscle has highly nonlinear characteristics such as hysterics. The experimental results are satisfactory and validity of the control method developed.