Development of the robot arm with soft touch 1st report: fundamental characteristic of ER clutch for a joint of the robot arm

摘要

Recently, the number of old people in Japan has been increasing. So it will become a serious problem that the lack of laborers. To cope with this problem, now we developing the robot arm with soft touch. This robot arm will be able to do some tasks in same of our environment. In this development, we developed the ER clutch to use for a joint of the robot arm. In this paper, we examined the fundamental characteristics for the ER clutch in order to use a joint of the robot arm. The result of the experiment shows that the coefficient of viscosity is proportional to the applied electric field. Therefore, this clutch is able to use to the joint of the robot arm with soft touch.