Novel safety control strategy at the time of collision under the worst condition for a robot with a single fault detection capability

2022 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 20H02114
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Review Section: Basic Section 20020:Robotics and intelligent system-related
• Research Institution: Nagoya University
• Principal Investigator: Yamada Yoji 名古屋大学, 工学研究科, 名誉教授 (90166744)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): 秋山 靖博 信州大学, 学術研究院繊維学系, 准教授 (00610536) ; 磯貝 善蔵 国立研究開発法人国立長寿医療研究センター, 病院, 副院長 (20285208) ; 岡本 正吾 名古屋大学, 工学研究科, 准教授 (10579064)
• Project Period (FY): 2020-04-01 – 2023-03-31
• Keywords: Fail-safe / Dummy finger / Minor injury / Contact motion / Runaway space / Worst-case conditions / Momentum control

Outline of Final Research Achievements

We propose a fail-safe (FS) contact motion space, a motion space in which the robot hand's end tip can maintain fail-safe contact motion with the human even when a robot without redundant degrees of freedom capable of single-fault detection runs out of control, and discuss the effectiveness and limitations of FS. In a human-robot cooperative system, the case in which the human hand, which statistically has the highest frequency of contact with the robot, collides with the robot under worst-case conditions was the subject of empirical experiments. In this study, we identified a contact motion control method for manipulators to which the FS contact motion space can be applied to limit the momentum due to contact with the robot to the severity of human skin at the level of minor injuries, and verified the usefulness of this control method with a dummy finger.

Free Research Field

ロボティクスおよび知能機械システム関連

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

While previous industrial robots could not perform tasks that require continuous contact with the human body, a human and a robot form a cooperative system, contact with the human will be allowed without fear of runaway, and thus the availability of the robot is expected to be extremely high.