抄録
The control of joint stiffness of a robot is extremely important to guarantee safe and dexterous motion, especially for the collaborative operation between a human and a robot. The previous devices which can vary the joint stiffness had problems such as increase of friction, increase of inertia and so on. In order to overcome these problems, we proposed a belt-formed pulley to vary the joint stiffness. The tendon-manipulator using belt-formed pulleys has many advantages such as a simple structure, low friction and lightness in weight. However, little is known about kinematic issues of the tendon-manipulator using belt-formed pulleys. In this paper, we propose a numerical solving method of forward kinematics (to obtain joint angles from wire length) using approximate models of a belt-formed pulley. Moreover expanding that method, the joint stiffness is obtained from wire length.
