Host: The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
Name : [in Japanese]
Date : May 10, 2017 - May 13, 2017
The present paper discusses an approach for quantitative evaluation of physical property of obstacles called “ease of movement” in order to make it possible disaster response manipulators to deal with harsh environment. The physical property evaluates how much force is necessary to make translation and rotation of target obstacle with respect to each force direction and force application location. Evaluation scheme of this property called “haptic sensing” is discussed under the consideration of combining visual and haptic information acquired from physical contact of a manipulator having tactile sensation with variable stiffness function and vision sensors. In order to carry out the proposed evaluation scheme, a prototype manipulator having a variable stiffness shoulder joint was developed, and its capability for force measurement was validated. Consequently, the prototype manipulator with an image sensor was used to perform ease-of-movement measurement experiment. By using obtained result, it was demonstrated that optimum force application point and force application direction can be found to make different kind motion (translation and rotation) of the obstacle.
