Development of Anthropomorphic Robot Arm (Mark-2)

The development of a robot with comprehensive intelligence is being promoted as part of a national project entitled ""Research and Development of Advanced Robots Technology"". In particular, there is a demand for a high technology remote control robot for use nuclear power plants, undersea operations for ocean exploitation, and fire=fighting. In order to meet this demand, research is being directed towards the developing the technology for controlling a master unit to detect the hand and arm movements of the operator and a slave unit so that those movements can be duplicated according to command signals from the master. In this paper, we report on the development of a human arm and hand, a master arm which uses a potentiometer, and an anthropomorphic five-fingered slave robot arm (Mark-2) which has the form and functions of the human upper limb. In addition, we present its control equipment and an evaluation of its operation.