Contact force distribution predictive control system for wearable robot with tactile sensors

摘要

The authors aim for safe assistance by feedback control of the contact force in the wearable robot. Securing safety for users is of utmost importance for wearable robots. For safe assistance of complex body parts such as the torso, the robot is desirable to be able to sense the contact force: the force applied to the human body by the robot. The authors have been studying robots sensing contact force distribution from tactile sensors on the robot surface as pressure distribution. The robot is controlled to reduce superfluous contact force. In this paper, a new control method, contact force distribution predictive control system, is proposed. This method predicts the contact force distribution of the next step from the current link positions and contact force distribution of the robot. The robot is controlled so as to realize the optimum contact force distribution. The proposed method is compared with the conventional control based on joint torque and the effectiveness of our method is verified.