The increasing demand for physical interaction between humans and robots has led to the development of robots that guarantee safe behavior when human contact occurs. However, attaining established levels of performance while ensuring safety poses formidable challenges in mechanical design, actuation, sensing and control. To achieve safety without compromising performance, the human-friendly rob...

The pneumatic robotic assistance system is fully MR-compatible and consists of a robot arm which can be manipulated in 6 degrees of freedom [1]. The robot arm is attached to a 260° arch that is mounted to the patient table of the scanner and can be passively prepositioned on the orbit at vertical 0°, 30° and 60° at each sides of the orbital according to the region of interest (e.g. spine, liver...

Materials and Method.s The pneumatic robotic assistance system is fully MR-compatible and consists of a robot arm which can be manipulated in 6 degrees of freedom [1]. The robot arm is attached to a 180° arch that is mounted to the patient table of the scanner and can be passively prepositioned on the orbit at vertical (0°, ± 35°, ± 67°) at each sides of the orbital according to the region of i...

In the remote controlled rehabilitation device, physical therapists must recognize the situation of the patient. The actuator in the device is also required to be flexible so as not to injure the body. In our previous study, the flexible pneumatic cylinder was proposed and tested. The flexible robot arm using the cylinders for human wrist rehabilitation was also developed. In the next step, it ...

A one-degree-of-freedom arm driven by pneumatic muscles has been designed and built in order to research the applicability of pneumatic artificial muscles in industrial applications. The experimental set-up is very non-linear and very difficult to control properly. As a reference, an enhanced PID controller was designed. At the same time, a sliding-mode controller based on an observer was desig...

The utilization of pneumatic muscles in the actuation of robotized systems is still in its early stages, hence the requirement of a study of such constructive solutions. Consequently the paper presents the constructive solution and performance of a robotized arm actuated by pneumatic muscles. This system is mounted on a wheelchair for persons with locomotive disabilities. The main reason underl...