Improvement of Control Performances of Rubber Artificial Muscle Manipulator and Its Application for Human-Robot Collaboration Task

橡胶人造肌肉具有柔韧性的基本特征，适合于人类协作任务。然而，由于其阻尼特性不充分，不容易实现令人满意的操作性能。然后将阻尼特性可调节的电流变阻尼器（ER阻尼器）安装在机械手的关节上，采用基于ER阻尼器的阻尼控制对气动伺服系统进行主动控制，从而获得满意的控制性能。同时，将橡胶人造肌肉机械手作为康复机器人应用于人体手臂的功能恢复训练。实验结果表明，提出的基于阻抗控制方法的多种功能恢复训练模式统一实现方案是有效的。为实现自主康复机器人，提出了一种基于二阶机械阻抗模型的康复机器人手臂特征识别方法。利用自适应识别器对阻抗模型的各个参数进行识别，同时实现训练操作。从而可以在训练操作过程中同时估计康复水平，有望成为实现自主康复机器人的有效方法。如何将识别的参数反映到功能恢复训练操作中，以及如何构建人机协作系统的构成，使训练操作与识别操作统一起来，是今后需要进一步研究的问题。

A rubber artificial muscle is suitable for the human collaborating task owing to its essential features of flexibility. However, it is not easy to implement a satisfactory manipulation performance since its damping characteristic is not sufficient. Then an electric rheological damper (ER damper) whose damping characteristic can be regulated is attached to the manipulator's joint, which leads to a satisfactory control performances by applying an active control of pneumatic servo with a damping control using an ER damper.At the same time, the rubber artificial muscle manipulator is applied to a function recovery training of human arms as a rehabilitation robot. Experiments results showed the effectiveness of a proposed unified implementation scheme for several function recovery training modes by using impedance control method. Also an identification method of characteristic of rehabilitant's arm was proposed for the purpose of a realization of an autonomous rehabilitation robot, in which characteristic of arm is estimated by the second order mechanical impedance model. Each parameter of the impedance model is identified using adaptive identifier at the same time with an implementation of a training manipulation. Consequently the recovery level can be estimated during the training manipulation simulataneously, which is expected to be an effective method to realize an autonomous rehabilitation robot.Following two matters are left as a future work, one is how the identified parameters should be reflected on the function recovery training manipulation and the other is the development of constitution of human-robot collaboration system in order to unify the training manipulation with an identification one.