Implementation and Test of Human-Operated and Human-Like Adaptive Impedance Controls on Baxter Robot

摘要

This paper presents an improved method to teleoperate impedance of a robot based on surface electromyography (EMG) and test it experimentally. Based on a linear mapping between EMG amplitude and stiffness, an incremental stiffness extraction method is developed, which uses instantaneous amplitude identified from EMG in a high frequency band, compensating for non-linear residual error in the linear mapping and preventing muscle fatigue from affecting the control. Experiments on one joint of the Baxter robot are carried out to test the approach in a disturbance attenuation task, and to compare it with automatic human-like impedance adaptation. The experimental results demonstrate that the new human operated impedance method is successful at attenuating disturbance, and results similarly to as automatic disturbance attenuation, thus demonstrating its efficiency.