The application of impedance control in rotation-traction manipulation bionic robot

This article demonstrates a novel robot applied in the Chinese Traditional Medicine clinical teaching area. As an effective therapy towards cervical spondylosis, the rotation-traction manipulation has been adopted extensively in clinical. However, medical malpractice may occur due to the lack of clinical experience. Therefore, it is crucial to design a simulation robot for practice purpose and evaluate the rotation-traction manipulation as a feedback. The emulator should imitate the motion of a real human neck when interacting directly with a medical clerk, hence, it must be designed according to specific biomechanics and safety protection rules. In this paper, a position-based impedance control algorithm which is constitutive of force detection and position control is applied to the simulation robot. On the one hand it has flexible properties, which converts external force signal into position command to simulate a human neck. On the other hand, it can detect the direction of the traction force, which reflects the accuracy of the rotation-traction manipulation. Finally, a specially designed experiment has been carried out to test the motion characteristics and rotation-traction manipulation evaluation function of the simulation robot.