Rotational Low-Impedance Physical Human-Robot Interaction Using Underactuated Redundancy

This paper extends the concept of underactuated redundancy for physical human-robot interaction (pHRI) in a context of industrial assembly by introducing a novel 1-dof gravity balanced rotational manipulator. The proposed architecture consists of a rotational active counterweight with a passive joint equipped with an encoder. The proposed architecture is first described, and the static equilibrium conditions are used to describe the operation of the mechanism. Then, alternative architectures are briefly introduced. Finally, an experimental validation is provided to demonstrate the viability of the concept for rotational low impedance pHRI.