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SUMMARYConventional multi-degree-of-freedom drive systems need many single-degree-of-freedom actuators, but this makes the structure larger and heavier. The development of a spherical actuator should reduce the number of actuators, but the low torque and narrow rotation range are still problems. We developed a 2-degree-of-freedom spherical actuator with an outer rotor that can produce a higher torque and wider rotation angle. In this paper, we propose a control method; we confirmed its usefulness by performing dynamic analysis using the three-dimensional finite element method and by taking measurements with a prototype.

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As one of the home services by a mobile manipulator system, we are aiming at the realization of the stand-up motion support for elderly people. This work is charaterized by the use of real-time feedback control based on the information from high speed tactile sensors for detecting the contact force as well as its center of pressure between the assisted human and the robot arm. First, this paper introduces the design of the tactile sensor as well as initial experimental results to show the feasibility of the proposed system. Moreover, several fundamental tactile sensing-based motion controllers necessary for the stand-up motion support and their experimental verification are presented. Finally, an assist trajectory generation method for the stand-up motion support by integrating fuzzy logic with tactile sensing is proposed and demonstrated experimentally.

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