Research on Interaction Safety of Human-Robot Collision Based on Series Elastic Actuator

How to ensure interaction safety between human and robot is one of the key problems of human-robot harmony. As a typical flexible actuator, series elastic actuator (SEA)is gradually used in interactive manipulator. However, research on human-robot interaction safety of manipulator based on SEA is quite in lack. Aimed at interaction safety of SEA during collision, single-DOF SEA experimental platform was designed and explored the influence to collision force of soft covering thickness, load inertia, collision velocity and joint stiffness. The results show that, increasing soft covering thickness, decreasing load inertia, collision velocity and joint stiffness can diminish collision force. The results of experiments can be conducted to design the interactive manipulator with multi-degrees.