Tapping motion detection incorporate with impedance control of robotics tapotement massage on human tissue

The objective of this paper is to realize a human-like massage tapping motion based on an anthropomorphic dual arm robot. The tapping motion is a unique technique in massage since it is much different from other massage techniques like kneading, stroking, acupressure and so on. The rate and rhythm are the most significant features which should be well-controlled in the tapping motion. To implement an effective robotic tapping motion, the on-line trajectory generator(OTG) is utilized to control the frequency during each tapping. Furthermore, since the massage is a human-contact motion, the safety of conducting a massage should be considered seriously. This paper uses the Cartesian based impedance control to enhance the safety and contact detection to satisfy diverse force demands during the robotic tapping motion. By these control methods, the feasibility of the tapping massage therapy based on robotic tapping motion is verified by the experiments. The experimental results demonstrate that the robotic tapping motion has reached 88 percentage similarity to the tapping motion of a massage therapist in different needed force. And the correlation coefficient is calculated to be about 0.95 which means there is a high positive relation between the robotic complete tapping motion and the human complete tapping motion.