Safety Properties and Collision Behavior of Robotic Arms with Elastic Tendon Actuation

Applications with physical human-robot interaction require a high level of safety even in case of software or hardware failures. This paper highlights the advantages of combining tendon actuation with transmission elasticity to maximize safety for robotic arms sharing workspaces with humans. To this end, the collision behavior of combinations of tendon or joint and elastic or stiff actuation with geared electrical motors as reliable actuators is compared using the lightweight BioRob arm as robotic platform in simulation. For the comparison a worst case scenario is assumed in which the robot arm is accelerated with maximum supply voltage over its joint range and collides with maximum end-effector velocity. The study shows that the robot arm achieves end-effector velocities as high as 6 m/s and that elastic tendon actuation reduces the end-effector impact energy and force by up to 90 % compared to stiff joint actuation. A considerable reduction of the gearbox stress is also achieved. In addition, the effect of motor current fuses limiting the motor torques is evaluated. It is shown that for the given high speed scenario, torque limiting devices can be effective to prevent excessive clamping forces in case of failure, but can not reduce the impact peak force without heavily compromising the robot dynamics. The main design criterion for safety should therefore be lightweight link design and compliant actuation, which can be achieved by using elastic tendon actuation. The paper concludes with the comparison of safety properties of robotic arms in research and industry.