Abstract
The purpose of this study was to develop a robot arm with human arm characteristics. For development of a robot arm that works with man, the robot arm must have characteristics of the human arm. The biceps brachii and triceps brachii of the upper limb were studied. Major characteristics of muscles are elastic factor and damping factor. In order to explore these characteristics of muscles, a human arm experiment was conducted. Using the characteristics obtained from the experiment, a robot arm was manufactured. The size of the robot arm was the same as that of the arm. An electromagnetic actuator system, which was developed to realize characteristics of human muscles, was employed. The actuator has a bobbin with some coils and the moving part that consists of a rare earth metal permanent magnet. The moving part of this actuator is driven by repulsive force in the magnetic field, which is generated by exciting each coil and the magnetism of the moving part. The excitation current is supplied to coils by the driver circuits, which is controlled by a personal computer. It was confirmed that the robot arm has the human arm characteristics.
