Compliant Manipulation Method for a Nursing Robot Based on Physical Structure of Human Limb

Nursing robots can be a good substitute to do nursing works for severely disabled patients who have completely lost the ability of movement. In order to improve the safety and comfort of human-robot interaction, we propose a novel compliant manipulation method for a nursing robot based on physical structure of human limb, which is applicable to severely disabled patients and can reduce the high performance requirements of sensors in existing human-robot interaction systems. The method aims to obtain the optimal manipulative force in static and dynamic manipulations. In the aspect of static calculation, static equilibrium conditions are used to obtain optimal static manipulative force. And in the aspect of dynamic calculation, lagrangian method is used to obtain optimal dynamic manipulative force based on predefined movement trajectory. Adams simulations and experiments are executed by manipulating limb model to conduct rehabilitation movements. Experimental results show that the proposed method can provide compliant manipulation method for a nursing robot.