CPA-Wrist: Compliant pneumatic actuation for antagonistic tendon driven wrists

In this letter, we propose a new compliant robotics wrist design concept. The system is tendon driven, pneumatically actuated and impedance controlled. We show simulative and experimental results for orientation-based impedance control, human robot interaction with deflection, and collision as well as zero gravity control. Large range point-to-point movements can be performed within 0.5 s and the system stabilizes itself within 0.4 s after external large deflective contacts. Maximum achieved task stiffness are 15 N m/rad and 0.5 N m/rad in simulation and experiment, respectively.