Real-time cooperating motion generation for man-machine systems and its application to medical technology

In this paper, we propose a cooperating motion generation method for man-machine cooperation systems in which the machines are controlled based on the intentional force applied by a human/humans for realizing several tasks in cooperation with a human/humans. By applying this method, the systems could avoid self-collisions, collisions with obstacles and other dangerous situations during the tasks. Proposed method consists of two parts; representation method of robots' body referred to as "RoBE (Representation of Body by Elastic elements)", and cooperating motion generation method using RoBE. As the application examples of proposed method, we focused on robots cooperating with a human/humans and surgery robot tools from the aspect of medical and welfare field. We did the experiments using human-friendly robot, referred to as MR Helper, for illustrating the validity of the proposed method. We also did the computer simulation to indicate the prospects of applications of our self-collision avoidance method to surgery robot tools.