Design, Kinematics, and Control of a Multijoint Soft Inflatable Arm for Human-Safe Interaction

In this paper, a novel soft inflatable arm is proposed for telepresence robots. The new proposed structure of the arm is achieved by a very common and low-cost inflatable material and it is very light, weighing only about 50 g. However, it can realize agile movement by driving six tiny cables installed in the shoulder and elbow joints. The soft inflatable arm can work by pumping air at a very low pressure (7.32 ± 3.45 kPa) and allows direct and soft human contact without any external force sensors. This paper proposes joint compressed models, joint kinematic models, and kinematic models for the whole inflatable robot arm. These models can be easily applied to multijoint arms. In addition, a new redundancy resolution method is also developed for the inflatable arm, which makes it easier to control resolution and is less complex than other traditional approaches. Numerous experiments have been conducted, including performances of accuracy, repeatability, motion trajectories, human-safe interaction, and remote interaction. Results are satisfactory and validate the expected performance of the proposed robotic arm.