車輪移動型ロボットのための速度ベースメカニカル安全ブレーキ組込み機構の開発

抄録

Recently, many human-friendly robots have been developed. Since human-friendly robots work in the same space as humans, it is necessary to ensure a high level of safety. We developed a velocity-based mechanical safety brake for human-friendly robots. If this safety brake detects an unexpected driveshaft’s angular velocity, it switches off all of the robot’s motors and then stops the driveshaft by gradually reducing the velocity of the driveshaft. However, to use this brake, the robot needed to be equipped with twice as many safety brakes as the robot’s driveshafts. Therefore, we have developed a mechanism to detect an unexpected driveshaft’s angular velocity, switch off all of the robot’s motors, and then stop all of the driveshafts by using only one velocity-based mechanical safety brake. This paper describes the development of the mechanism. We present experimental results to check whether the mechanism achieved the necessary function or not.