Anthropomorphic Soft Robotics - From Torque Control to Variable Intrinsic Compliance

The paper gives an overview on the developments at the German Aerospace Center DLR towards anthropomorphic robots which not only try to approach the force and velocity performance of humans, but also have similar safety and robustness features based on a compliant behaviour. We achieve this compliance either by joint torque sensing and impedance control, or, in our newest systems, by compliant mechanisms (so called VIA - variable impedance actuators), whose intrinsic compliance can be adjusted by an additional actuator. Both approaches required highly integrated mechatronic design and advanced, nonlinear control and planning strategies, which are presented in this paper.