Abstract
Many different kinds of artificial arms have been developed for people who have been injured in traffic or industrial accidents. A motor drive is mainly used as an artificial arm for realizing highly precise position and force control. However, when the artificial arm of a motor drive is given a strong external force, it may cause injuries. In this research, we adopt a pneumatic actuator because it is a safe drive source. The five fingers of its artificial arm move like those of humans, and the finger joints are manipulated by a control model whose structure is difficult. Previous work, which failed to consider the influence of gravity, had to be offset in real time, and so controlling the model structure was difficult. In this basic research on developing an artificial arm, we manufactured a two-link manipulator of a pneumatic actuator drive source. We propose a model that consists of a pair of two-link manipulators that was mutually opposed to hold and manipulate objects. Our experiments and simulations verified that an object can be moved to a certain initial position by a desired value. We showed comparatively identical behavior and verified the holding and manipulation validity of our model based on gravity.
