Development of a 2-link Object with Viscous Joint for Imitating Care-receiver’s Body

Recently, to solve shortage of the caregivers caused by the aging society problem, many researchers have developed several kinds of nursing-care assistant robots or mechanisms. In this research, a nonprehensile robot is considered to realize holding motion for keeping a 2-link object (regarded as a care-receiver) stable on the robot arms. In order to better imitate the care-receiver’s body, a 2-link object with viscous joint is developed. After measuring parameters of the 2-link object, the dynamic model of the robot systems including nonprehensile robot and 2-link object is derived based on Lagrange equation. For verifying the effectiveness of the viscous joint, a simulation is done by Simulink.