Development of anthropomorphic dual arm robot with distinct degrees of freedom for coordinated operations

Abstract

Development of assistive robots for helping the disabled is a field of research that has gathered attention recently. According to surveys, about one billion people in the world population have some kind of disability. Dual arm robots are a suitable solution for helping people with mobility impairments. The current development in the field of dual-arm robots is focused mainly in the industrial field to carry out cyclic tasks. This includes activities such as pick and place, assembling parts and doing other industrial operations. Unlike human arms, these dual arm robots lack versatility in doing a wide variety of tasks with adequate coordination between the arms. Due to these constraints, industrial dual arm robots cannot be directly implemented for assisting the disabled. This paper focuses on designing a compact dual arm robot which closely mimics human arms to do coordinated tasks with lesser Degrees of Freedom (DoF). Therefore, the developed robot extends its capabilities from industrial applications to daily life activities. Closed loop control is used in actuating the proposed 9 DoF dual arm robot with distinct DoF. Target position is acquired using image processing. Hand to hand coordination in various operations such as pick and place, transferring objects, serving food, etc. has successfully experimented.