Consideration of tension limits in joint space for 3 pairs of 6 tendon arms with nonlinear springs

Safety and versatility are necessary for robots to perform various tasks in human living area. There are tendon manipulators with nonlinear springs as a manipulator for the requirement. The manipulator can control joint torque and joint mechanical stiffness simultaneously. This paper proposes a generation method of commands in joint space considering tension limit. The method generates commands so that command error as small as possible. Because it is controlled in tendon space, the tendon mechanisms has a tension limiter. The proposed method takes account not only of weaknesses of torque limit, but also of tension limit. Effectiveness of the proposed method is confirmed by a simulation.