An Adjustable Impedance Control on the Neuro-Muscular System

This paper describes the importance of an adjustable impedance control for contact task robots from the vantage point of the human arm control. We know the human arm operates well especially in contact tasks. The reason for that is most probably the joint impedance of the human arms are adjusted directly by muscle viscous friction control and elasticity ity control. Incidentally, elasticity change is obvious though viscous friction change is not obvious in continuous motion pertaining to in vivo muscle. Therefore, to estimate the muscle viscous friction and elasticity change in contact task, we carried out some visual target tracking experiments on the human wrist joint with an elastic load in continuous motion. Moreover, we carried out some computer simulations on a dynamic model of the neuro-muscular system. Because of correspondence of the experiments with the simulations we can say that the compliant and stable robot performing contact tasks is best controlled by adjusting its joint damping and stiffness directly.