A force sensor for the control of a human-like tendon driven neck

This paper describes the design and realization of a force sensor and its use in the control of a human-like robotic neck actuated with tendons. The sensor is designed to have high sensitivity and to be robust to large loads. We use the sensor to control the force exerted by the tendons and realize a controller for the two degrees of freedom of the neck. With respect to previous work [1] we show that the use of force feedback improves the robustness of the controller. Although quite specific to the robotic setup that we considered the work we describe shows some insights that could be useful for the control and realization of similar structures actuated with tendons.