Modular Robot Arm Design for Physical Human-Robot Interaction

This paper describes the design and implementation of the controls and power plant for a robotic arm for physical human-robot interaction on a cyber-physical wheelchair system. There are almost 50 million people in the US who have some degree of disability, and more than 6.5 million of them experience problems with self-care. The aim of this research is to develop a system to control a modular cable-driven arm which will allow locked-in individuals, who are unable to interact with the physical world through movement and speech, to perform activities of daily living (ADL). We present the design of a compact power plant for the 5DOF arm. The robot control is implemented using the Robot Operating System (ROS) framework.