Design and development of a new robot joint using a mechanical impedance adjuster

Abstract

The object of our work is to realize passive impedance on the joints of robot fingers by mechanical elements, as leaf springs and brakes, and to develop robot fingers using the new mechanism to grasp objects softly. This paper presents a new joint mechanism, named "mechanical impedance adjuster", and an impedance control method of the robot finger joint by this mechanism. The effectiveness of this method is shown by the experiment on a 1-DOF finger model.