Abstract
Stiffness is an important factor for robots in a human environment. Therefore, many methods for stiffness control, which enable robots to setup stiffness, have been developed. Although the performance of stiffness control is quite an important factor, no methods for quantitative comparison of these methods exist. Thus, the characteristics and advantages of a stiffness control method are quantitatively investigated and compared, and certain evaluation criteria that can assist in guiding the design process of stiffness control systems are proposed. The experimental results show the quantitative comparison among three types of robot arms and investigate their property.
