Enabling Massage Actions: An Interactive Parallel Robot with Compliant Joints

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel parallel massage robot with compliant joints and a unified force-position control strategy, enabling precise force and motion control for improved massage quality and user experience.

Contribution

It presents a new compliant parallel robot design with a force-position control method that does not require a robotic dynamics model, enhancing massage task performance.

Findings

Successfully achieves desired forces and motions in massage tasks

Demonstrates high user satisfaction in experiments

Operates without needing a detailed robotic dynamics model

Abstract

We propose a parallel massage robot with compliant joints based on the series elastic actuator (SEA), offering a unified force-position control approach. First, the kinematic and static force models are established for obtaining the corresponding control variables. Then, a novel force-position control strategy is proposed to separately control the force-position along the normal direction of the surface and another two-direction displacement, without the requirement of a robotic dynamics model. To evaluate its performance, we implement a series of robotic massage experiments. The results demonstrate that the proposed massage manipulator can successfully achieve desired forces and motion patterns of massage tasks, arriving at a high-score user experience.