Application of Pneumatic Soft Mechanism to a Human Friendly Robot

Abstract

When robots work together with a human or contact with a human body directly in such as a medical welfare åeld, in order to avoid an accident from crash and so on, a çexibility is required for the robot.The purpose of this study is to realize a safe mechanism for a human-friendly robot. The soft mechanism comprises a soft actuator and a soft sensor. The soft actuator and soft sensor are made of a silicone rubber body and driven with a pneumatic power.In this paper, the structure and the fundamental characteristics of soft actuator and soft sensor are described, and then the structure and the fundamental operation of the developed soft hand are shown.