Abstract
We have been aiming at developing a robotic aid for disabled persons who need assistance in rising from a bed or a chair. In order to decrease the force applied to the body when a robotic arm contacts the human body, the mechanical behavior of the body's surface was investigated. From the experimental results, when a plate at the end of the robotic arm slides on the body's surface, shearing and normal force applied to the body were in proportion to the square of compressive displacement of the body's surface. The sliding speed showed no contribution to change in the shearing force. Furthermore utilizing this data, the most suitable joint compliance of the robotic aid touching softly against the human body was calculated. For a simulated task, the handling arm of the robotic aid was inserted between the body and a bed mat. During this process, the standards of evaluation were the normal and shearing force applied to the body. As a result, the most suitable joint compliance for the joint that was the nearest to the body was found to be from about 0.05 [rad N-1m-1].
