Real-time compliance control of an assistive joint using QNX operating system

Abstract

An assistive robot is a novel service robot, playing an important role in the society. For instance, it can amplify human power not only for the elderly and disabled to recover/rehabilitate their lost/impaired musculoskeletal functions but also for healthy people to perform tasks requiring large forces. Consequently, it is required to consider both accurate position control and human safety, which is the compliance. This paper deals with the robot control compliance problem based on the QNX real-time operating system. Firstly, the mechanical structure of a compliant joint on the assistive robot is designed using Solidworks. Then the parameters of the assistive robot system are identified. The software of robot control includes data acquisition and processing, and control to meet the compliance requirement of the joint control. Finally, a Hogan impedance control experiment is carried out. The experimental results prove the effectiveness of the method proposed. © 2013 Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.