Design of a Percussive Massage Robot Tapping Human Backs

A percussive massage robot for senior health care is under development at our Intelligent Control and Robotics Laboratory. This paper presents a conceptual design of the massage robot, forward and inverse kinematic analysis, and Jacobian derivation of the robot manipulator that has 4 degree of freedom motion. Furthermore, the shape and magnitude of impact force for percussive massage tapping human backs are obtained through experimental study using a load cell, which give the basics of dynamic analysis and force control of the robot manipulator.