Lightweight Human-Friendly Robotic Arm Based on Transparent Hydrostatic Transmissions

We present theoretical and experimental results regarding the development and the control of a two-link robotic arm with remotized actuation via rolling diaphragm hydrostatic transmissions. We propose a dynamical model capturing the essential dynamics of the developed transmission/robot ensemble and implement a control strategy consisting of two nested loops, the inner one performing high-bandwidth joint torque regulation and the outer one producing various types of compliance responses for effective human-robot interactions. Extensive sets of experiments, testing both the low-level torque controller and the high-level compliance controller, confirm the effectiveness of the proposed hardware-software remotization architecture.