HYBRID ACTUATOR FOR ROBOT MANIPULATORS:
DESIGN, CONTROL AND PERFORMANCE
James K. Mills
Robotics and Automation Laboratory
Department of Mechanical Engineering
University of Toronto
5 King’s College Road
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M5S 1A4
ABSTRACT
In this paper, a new hybrid actuation method for robotic mani-
pulators is proposed. The actuator employs a hybrid combination of
d.c. servo motors and more recently developed muscle-like bladder
-
actuators. One d.c. motor muscle actuator pair is arranged coanta-
gonistically with an identical d.c. motor-muscle actuator pair to drive
a manipulatorjoint Through a suitable control applied to the hybrid
actuator, independent control of joint torsional stiffness and joint
position is made possible. When air pressure is varied in the muscle
actuators, the muscle actuator stiffness and length change. In order
to only affect the hybrid actuator stiffness with this pressure change,
d.c. servo motors are used to compensate for muscle actuator length
changes, hence joint position is unaffected. High gain servo motor
control ensures a response to disturbances due almost solely to the
muscle actuator stiffness characteristics. Dynamic equations of
motion are developed for a two joint manipulator with a hybrid
actuator used to drive the final link. A control is formulated for this
system to achieve, in addition to independentjoint torsional stiffness
and joint position control, approximately &coupled and linearized
dynamics. A numerical simulation of this two degree of freedom is
presented to verify the performance of the closed-loop system.
1. INTRODUCTION
Recently, there has been increasing interest within the robotics
research community in the area of methods of actuation of robotic
manipulators. This recent activity is motivated by the premise, gen-
erally accepted within the robotics community, that a significant
improvement in the dynamic response of manipulators will be
achieved through the development of new and more effective
methods of actuator, Jacobsen (1989) and Jacobsen et al. (1985).
Many new actuation methods have been proposed and some of these
have progressed in their development to the experimental
verification phase. At least one novel actuation method, developed
by Bridgestone Inc., has been utilized in a commercially available
robot. Several examples of new actuators recently developed include
shape memory alloy based systems, Bergamasco, Salsedo and
Tokushima (1987). electrostaticmotors, Trimmer and Gabriel (1987)
and Inaba and Tohshima (1987), polymer bladders, Immega and
Grodski (1987), Inoue (1987), contractile polymers, Perkins et al.
(1987) and linear step motors, Ish-Shalom (1989). The dynamic
Characteristics, application, and relative complexity of the above new
actuation technologies varies considerably.
One significant application of new actuation hardware is found
in their use in dextrous manipulator hands. T h i s is a relatively
significant application area in light of the fact that certain anthropo-
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cH2876-1/90/oooO/1872$01.00 0 1990 IEEE
morphic dynamic characteristicsart. seen to be desirable during exe-
cution of tasks which require contact to be made with objects in the
robot work environment. The attainment of one anthropomorphic
feature in particular is seen to be important to the successful execu-
tion of contact tasks. This feature is the independent control of
manipulator joint torsional stiffness and manipulator joint position.
As discussed at length in Hogan (1979) and Hogan (1984),
independent stiffness and position control may be achieved through
variation of the mechanical impedance of coantagonistic muscles.
As pointed out comxtly by Hogan, there are certain advantages to
the variation of torsional stiffness through variation of antagonistic
muscle stiffness over other schemes which utilize negative feedback
with conventional actuators such as d.c. motors. Feedback control is
limited by transmission delays of a feedback loop as well as the
open-loop bandwidth of the sensor characteristics. Due to these lim-
itations, the maximum gain that can stabilize the system is limited,
and hence the maximum torsional stiffness of the closed-loop system
is limited. In sharp contrast to the above feedback scheme, variable
torsional stiffness achieved through antagonistic coactivation is not
limited by such transmission delays. In effect, the torsional stiffness
is achievable in an open-loop manner, with independent joint posi-
tion control. Hence, once muscle stiffness is adjusted in the coanta-
gonistic pair, the response of the joint to input disturbances is a
natural response of the system, independent of any feedback loop.
Further work by Hogan (1985), discusses more complex issues per-
taining to the control of antagonistic muscle pairs for the achieve-
ment of muscle-joint posture and movement control.
The capability to tune the stiffness of manipulator joints can
considerably simplify the execution of certain tasks. Consider the
task of tuming a crank handle. If the stiffness of the manipulator is
high, the end-point of the manipulator must be moved in the r e q u i d
arc with a high positional accuracy, to avoid the generation of large
interference forces. This may be difficult to achieve if the position
of the arc is not known to a high precision. In contrast, if the stiff-
ness of the joints is low, the end-effector only has to move in the
general direction of the movement required. The kinematic con-
straints of the task determine the motion of the end-effector.
Independent control of manipulator joint torsional stiffness and
joint position is an anthropomorphic feature that is highly desirable
for many robotic tasks. Considerable effort has been expended in the
design of dextrous manipulator hands in order to achieve this
dynamic feature, i.e. Mason and Salisbury (1985). Dextrous mani-
pulator hands emulate this anthropomorphic feature through varia-
tion in gains of pneumatic or d.c. servo motor actuators, which act in
an antagonistic manner to drive the finger joints with cables. Con-
siderab6 care must be exercised in the design and fabrication of such Constant tendon tension is maintained through the use of d.c. servo
devices to ensure that the friction inherent in the complex tendon- motor control. As the joint stiffness varies in response to changing
pulley systems of such devices does not inhibit the desired response, air pressure, so does the bladder actuator length. Hence, the d.c.
leading to failure to obtain independent joint stiffness and position servo motors function is (i) to compensate for the length change due
control. to changing air pressure and (ii) cause motion of the joint to be
This paper proposes a new method of actuation to achieve effected. Figure 3 illustrates this mode of operation.
independent control of joint torsional stiffness and position. This In order to effectively decouple the response of the motors and
new method utilizes two commercially available actuation technolo- cable-pulley system from the response of the bladder actuators, a
gies, namely d.c. servo motors and polymer bladder type actuators. relatively high gain is proposed for the d.c. servo motors. In this
The approach to achieve independent joint stiffness and position manner, the response. of the system to an exogenous torque distur-
control is a hybrid combination of d.c. servo motor actuators and bance that may occur during a collision will be almost independent
muscle-like polymer bladder actuators. Two pairs of these muscle- of the d.c. servo motor system. Hence, the d.c. servo gains are
actuator - d.c. motor combinations, acting antagonistically in a chosen sufficiently high that the position of these motors does not
manner similar to human muscles, permits the realization in change significantly when an extemal disturbance acts on the system.
hardware of an anthropomorphic feature seen to be key in the The details of this proposed control are given subsequently.
enhanced wrformance of robots. Due to the configuration and Hence, the hybrid actuation method proposed here utilizes
method of control of the proposed hybrid actuation method, the bladder type actuators to exploit the property of their changing stiff-
dynamic response due to the variable stiffness of the muscle-like ness. In order to counteract the accompanying length change, d.c.
bladder actuators is achieved in a manner that is virtually indepen- servo motors are used to maintain a constant tension in the cables
dent of the friction characteristicsof the hybrid actuator cable pulley connecting to the bladder actuators. It is emphasized that when
system. muscle-like actuators are used in an antagonistic manner by them-
The organization of this paper is as follows. Section 2 selves, to achieve a joint position change, the pressure difference in
discusses the configuration of the proposed hybrid actuation method. each bladder leads to an asymmetric stiffness of the antagonistic sys-
To illustrate the proposed hybrid actuation method, section 3 tem. With the method proposed in this paper, the stiffness of the two
develops equations of motion of a two joint manipulator with one bladder actuators may be maintained equal, to within the tolerance of
joint actuated with the hybrid actuation method and the other joint the bladder air pressure control system, and set to a prescribed value.
actuated conventionally with a d.c. servo motor. In section 4, a con-
trol strategy is developed which provides for near independent con- 3. DYNAMICS
trol of the joint torsional stiffness and joint position. A numerical
simulation of the configurationdeveloped in section 3 is presented in In this section, a dynamic model of the hybrid actuator pro-
section 5 to support the theoretical claims of the behaviour of the posed in this paper is developed. In order to illustrate how this
proposed system. Finally section 6 discusses the merits of the pro- actuator might be used. a two degree of freedom system as shown in
posed actuation method. Figure 4 was chosen. The system in Figure 4 is a two degree of free-
dom robot with the second joint actuated by the proposed hybrid
2. HYBRID ACTUATOR CONFIGURATION actuator, and the first joint actuated by a conventional d.c. servo
motor. From this diagram, it is seen that there are several pulleys
Polymer bladder actuators arc typically operated pneumatically over which the cables run which attach the bladder actuators to the
using compressed air. When air pressure is varied in the bladder, base of the second link. Pneumatic servo valves, as shown in this
there is a corresponding length change leading to a possibly large diagram, are used to control the pressure within the bladder actua-
force generated. It is this force that may be. used to actuate robot tors, while the position of each of the three motors shown is con-
manipulators. Figure 1 illustrates two possible modes of operation trolled separately.
of bladder actuators, i.e. Immega and Grodski (1987) and Miyazaki
et al. (1989). As demonstrated by the work of Inoue (1987) and oth- 3.1. Servo Motor Dynamics
ers, coantagonistic actuation of manipulators joints employing
muscle-like polymer bladders is an approach that has proved suc- The d.c. servo motor dynamic model is given as follows, Fort-
cessful. One drawback of this scheme is the fact that accompanying mann and Hitz (1977)
a length change of the bladder actuator is a change in the mechanical de
stiffness of the device. This change in mechanical stiffness results J - = -ce+m-mr. (3.la)
dt
primarily from the change in air pressure inside the bladder actuator.
Hence, unlike an anthropomorphic response, actuation with muscle- di
L- = - R e i + U - vb (3.lb)
like actuators acting in antagonistic pairs does not permit indepen- dt
dent joint torsional stiffness control and joint position control. where:
To achieve the anthropomorphic response of independent joint 0 4 motor angular position
torsional stiffness and joint position control, it is proposed in this
paper to use a hybrid combination of bladder actuators and d.c. servo i A motorannaturecurrent
motors. Acting in an antagonistic mode, two bladder - d.c. servo J motorinertia
motor pairs with the appropriate control applied can achieve c E viscous damping coefficient
independent control of joint torsional stiffness and joint position. R, 5 rotorresistance
Figure 2 illustrates such a combination of bladder actuators and d.c. m = k l i , motortorque
servo motors actuating a single degree of freedom device. kl motprtoqueconstant
vb = k2 8, motor back emf
The operation of the proposed hybrid actuator is as follows. As k2 A backemfconstant
previously discussed, the length of the bladder actuator is controlled mL loadtoque
with air pressure, but with a corresponding change in bladder stiff- L E motorinductance
ness. Unlike a conventional approach to actuation with muscle-like
actuators, i.e. Inoue (1987), the sole purpose of the presence of the
u 4 motorinput.
bladder actuators in the hybrid approach proposed here is to control The motor inductance of a typical d.c. servo motor is small, hence
the joint torsional stiffness. In response to changing air pressure, the (3.lb) may be approximated by
stiffness of both bladder actuators is varied simultaneously, thereby
achieving a desired dynamic response for a given torsional stiffness. 0 = -Rei 4- U - Vb. (3.2)

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Using (3.2) and (3.la), a second order approximation to the motor Additionally, the load toque on motor 1 is the driving toque at joint
dynamics is obtained as follows 1 reflected through a transmission ratio,hence
11
TI = -mL, (3.8)
RI
The above expression represents a close approximation to the actual where:
motor dynamics for sufficiently small motor inductance, Kokotovic TI A toque applied at joint 1
et al., (1986). R 1, r 1 radius of pulleys associated with joint 1 as shown in Figure 4
mL, $ load toque on motor I.
33. Bladder Actuator Dynamics
In this paper, we assume a linear relationship between bladder
stiffness coefficient and internal air pressure. The actual behaviour
of the stiffness coefficient with pressure is a far more complicated R14'
phenomenon, i.e. Miyazaki et al. (1989), however here, a simplified 11Re
approach is taken. It is pointed out that locally, the behaviour of the
bladder actuator is linear to a good approximation. Hence, the fol- 0
lowing relationship is given
k =up (3.4) - U1
Re11
where:
k A bladder mechanical stiffness coefficient
+ (3.9)
p internal air pressure of bladder R(Ta - Tb)
a 4 propoltionalityconstant. 2

Hence, the bladder stiffness is an instantaneous function of bladder

pressure.

33. Pneumatic Valve Dynamics

From Van de Vegte (1986), a simplified form of the dynamics
of a pneumatic valve is given by

R,~+klkz * kt ra
where: 6, + e, = -U, - - T,
J
(3.10a)
JRe JRe
p pressure supplied by valve
T, A valve time constant
k, E valvegain
u, E valveinput. where:
e, A angular position of motor a
3.4. Mechanical Model ras
Ob
rb [ angular position of motor b
radii of pulleys as shown
The dynamic model of the mechanical manipulator system u,, 15 inputtomotora
depicted in Figure 4 is given as follows: & 5 inputtomotorb.
+ H ( q , q ) + G(q) = T (3.6) Combining (3.4) with (3.5) for each servo valve we have
where: - 1 a kv U:
k, + - k a = (3.11a)
inertia matrix, q ) ER^
~

CP (q) A TV T"
H (q, q) a' vector of Coriolis and centripetal terms, H(., .) E R 2
G(q) E vector of gravity toques, G(.)E R2 (3.1 lb)
'L E vector of input toques, 'L E R Z
9 vector of generalized joint coordinates,q E ~ 2 . where:
We now combine the above three dynamic models. From the
configuration of the system of Figure 4, the load seen by the motor
dynamics is related to the input torque driving the manipulator in the
k,
kb
u:
'
A stiffness coefficient of bladder actuator a
stiffness coefficient of bladder actuator 6
servova~veainput
following way. From the geometry of Figure 4, it is seen that the net u~ 4 servovalvebinput.
toque on joint 2 is given by the following
For convenience, the entire system model is written below
'Lz = R (Ta - Tb) R,C + klkz
where: RI61
Ta A k,, (r, 0, - Rqz), tension in cable a
Tb kb (rb + Rq2), tension in cable b
R pulley radius as indicated in Figure 4
~2 ! torque applied at joint 2.

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 (3.12e)
We note that for the general manipulator case, the motor
dynamics as given by (3.3) cannot be combined algebraically with
the mechanical model of the manipulator given by (3.6) as is the case
in this paper. The assumptions leading to (3.9) are given below:
(i) the kinetic energy of the motor rotors is due solely to
their own rotation
(ii) the rotor/transmission inertia is symmetric about the
rotor axis of rotation.
For the configuration shown in Figure 4, these two assumption hold.
However, if the motors were mounted in the wrist of a manipulator,
equation (3.9) is an approximation to the actual dynamic equations
of motion.
Equations (12a) - (12e) represent the equations of motion of a
two joint manipulator, which could be regarded as a finger of an
anthropomorphic manipulator hand, for example. The final link of
this mechanical device is actuated with the hybrid actuator proposed
in this paper, while the first joint is driven in a traditional manner
with a d.c. servo motor.
4. CONTROL STRATEGY
In the following, a control strategy is proposed for the two joint
manipulator system of Figure 4 to achieve the following goals: (i)
independent control of joint 2 torsional stiffness and joint 2 position
and (ii) approximate linearization and decoupling of the manipulatcr
dynamics. The control strategy to achieve objective (i) amounts to a
high gain feedback applied to the motors in Figure 4 which control
cable a and b. Application of such a high gain feedback effectively
decouples the servo motor dynamics from the response involving the
bladder actuators. In essence, the apparent d.c. servo motor stiffness
is much higher than the bladder stiffness, thereby achieving near
independent control of the joint torsional stiffness and joint position.
An approximation to a decoupled linearized response is achieved
through the application of a nonlinear global linearizing decoupling
control, Freund (1982).
Initially, the equations of motion (3.12a)-(3.12e) are rewritten
in order to more easily formulate the proposed control strategy. The
equations of motion are given as
@ (x) x + H(x, x) + G (x) = R (x) + U (4.la)
6 + F (6) = D (T) + Be u,b (4.1b)
=Ak + BkUk (4.1~)
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D(T) 4 [ J a
-'IT -$Tb]'
:1
kl
Be 4 -
JRe
A!
we now discuss the dynamic behaviour and control of the
hybrid actuator. Ideally, decoupled, ~ i l W U i ~dynamics
d are sought
for the manipulator configurationshown in Figure 4. As discussed
previously, independent control over joint torsional stiffness and
joint position is desired as well. In order to achieve a suitable
dynamic response to disturbances that may act on the hybrid actua-
tor, due to toques resulting from a collision for example, it is
desired to apply high gain feedback to motors a and b. With a high
gain feedback applied to these motors, the nsponse of the hybrid
actuator to a toque disturbance seen at joint 2 will be nearly decou-
pled from the response of the motors a and 6. Hence, the joint
response is determined almost solely by the stiffness of the bladder
actuators as desired, and is not affected by motor dynamics.
Further examination of the configuration of Figure 4 reveals
that the motion of joint two is govemed by the tension difference
given by
-
Ta Tb = k. r, e, - -
kb rb e b - k, Rqz kb Rq2. (4.2)
Close trajectory tracking of joint two, q z ( r ) , may be achieved if the
stiffness, k,, kb, assumed here to be equal, aIe relatively large. A
large stiffness ensures that the load toque at joint two, and hence the
tension difference (4.5) is small, thereby leading to small deflections
of qZ(t) from its desired value q Z ( t ) . Hence, low inertial,
corioWantripetal and gravity forces or alternatively, large bladder
stiffness b,kb lead to close trajectory tracking of q2(r). As previ-
ously discussed, high gain on motors a and 6 ensures that the desired
motor trajectories e:(t) and e;f(r) are closely met, leading to good
trajectory tracking of q z ( t ) as discussed.
Thus, a qualitative description of the dynamics behaviour and
control of the hybrid actuator is presented. Clearly, linearized and
decoupled dynamics is unachievable with a simple computed torque
type of control as will be proposed here. However, for moderate toque R (To - Tb) was equal to the right hand side of (4.7a) to sim-
bladder stiffness, reasonable system performance can be achieved as plify the presentation.
will be by simulation results given in the following section. Note that to ensure a dynamic response to disturbances at joint
An additional control requirement of the two motors a,6 is to two that depends on only the bladder stiffnesses, k,, kb, a high gain
maintain a constant nominal tension, denoted T., in the cable. This control is proposed for motors a and b. It is then assumed that the
is to ensure that the cable never becomes slack due to toque distur- gains g, and gd are large such that for some p . ~ l
bances acting on the system perhaps arising from a collision of the I
final link with the work environment. Denoting Td as the desired g, = - K, (4.8a)
cable tension to cause the manipulator dynamics to be decoupled and F
linearized, the following tensions must be generated 1
gd=-K& (4.8b)
Td P
T, = T,, +- 2 (4.3) Application of the control (4.7b) to the motom dynamics given by
(4.1b) leads to closed-loop motor dynamics
Td
Tb = T,,,,,,, - -.
2 (4.4) pee + K,& + KPee = 0 (4.9)
where:
Hence, the driving cable tension is shared equally between motors
a,6. In order to generate the appropriate cable tension difference, ee 4 e ed. -
the control must be such that, from (3.7) the following are satisfied For suitably chosen K,, K p and small p, the error eo --f 0 ve
1 rapidly, Kokotovic et al. (1986) hence 6, + 0: and + 6!? 6.
ka (ra ea - Rq2) - Tnan = 'i- Td (4.5a) Hence, with a very stiff control applied to motors a, 6, the joint two
disturbance response will depend only on the bladder actuator stiff-
- kb (rb 66 + Rq2) + T- = y1 Td . (4.5b) ness.
From the proposed control given in (4.7a), we can compute the
In order to generate the desired trajectories for the motors a,6 given desired cable tension. Recalling that U = (ul uz)' in (4.7a), and
a desired trajectory q$ (t), we have u2 = R (Ta - Tb) we have
rl
(4.6a) Td(t) = h2 (X, X) + g2 (X) + $21 - 422 1 [ Xd
I t RI
G , (xd - x) + Gd (xd - x)1.4.10)
Since all quantities on the right hand side of (4.10) are defined, T (t)
can be computed and used in (4.6a,b) to compute 6: ( t ) and 66J(t),
where Td(t)has yet to be specified.
thereby completing the control &sign. With this very rapid conver-
The following control is proposed to achieve the indicated gence of ee + 0, the torque signal applied to joint two rapidly con-
verges to the desired decoupling linearizing input given in (4.10)
(4.7a) under the previously stated assumption on the bladder stiffness.
Hence, the equation of motion obtained by applying (4.7a) to (4. la)
(4.7b) is given as
(4.7c) e, + G , e, + Gd e, =0 (4.11)
where:

''
.d .d
. .
(r)l,
qg ( t ) desired position trajectory
where:
e, 4 x - xd.
For properly chosen G , and G d , e, --f 0 as t + -.
Hence, the pro-
posed control has achieved a nearly decoupled linearized system.
x ,x 4 desired velocity and acceleration Application of the control (4.7~) to the bladder stiffness
G, 4 diag (G,11 G , z ) , velocity gain matrix dynamics given by (4.1~)leads to the following

[:i :I,
Gd 4 diag (Gdll G d z ) , position gain matrix k = A k + kd. (4.12)
Since T, > 0, A is stable and hence k + kd as r + -.
ed 4 desired motor a,b position The proposed control leads to near decoupled joint torsional
stiffness and joint position control. As seen by the overall closed-
-
loop dynamics given by (4.9) (4.12), a toque disturbance occuring
id,id4 desired velocity and acceleration at joint two will cause an error in the two motor angular positions
f (r)l e,, 06. Due to the high gain control on motors a,b, this error eo,
kd 4 kif it;], desired bladder actuator stiffness tends to zero very rapidly, hence the response of the system to the
disturbance results almost solely from bladder actuator deflection.
Phrased differently, the stiffness of the bladder actuators is
g, diag (g,ll g,z), velocity gain matrix significantly less than the stiffness of motors a,b in closed-loop,
hence the system response to a torque disturbance at joint two is
gd 4 diag g d z ) , position gain matrix. nearly decoupled from the responses of motors a,b.
Note in (4.7a) that u2 in U is not actually a control input to the It is seen in this section, that the overall behaviour of the sys-
system. The reason for writing (4.7a) in this manner is the follow- tem depends strongly on the choice of control gains for the motors
ing. To keep the form of the control purposefully simple, it was a,b and the stifikess of the bladder actuators. Hence the control pro-
determined not to disguise the fact that the control (4.7a) has the posed has achieved the stated goals: (i) to provide nearly indepn-
same form as a linearizing decoupling control, identical to the com- dent joint torsional stiffness and joint position control and (ii) to
puted torque technique. Hence, u2 is written as though the applied approximately decouple and linearize the system dynamics.

5. NUMERICAL SIMULATION
The dynamic equations of motion given by (4.la)-(4.lc) with
the control (4.7a)-(4.7c) applied was simulated numerically using
SIMNON, a commercially available numerical simulation package
for nonlinear systems, Elmqvist et al. (1986). The electrical,
mechanical and kinematic parameter values chosen for the simula-
tions presented here are given in Table 1. Several simulations are
presented here to illustrate the performance of the system.
In order to verify that the stiffness of the bladder actuators of
the hybrid actuator, and hence joint torsional stiffness can be varied
independently of joint position, the stiffness of the bladders was
varied simultaneously as shown in Figure 5. The plots in this figure
illustrate that as bladder stiffness varies, joint position is unaffected.
The bladder stiffness was decreased from 50,000 N/m to 25,000 N/m
in a time period of one second as shown in this figure.
To illustrate that the response of the hybrid actuator to a torque
disturbance is due almost solely to the dynamic characteristics of air
bladders, a toque disturbance was applied at joint two, as might
arise due to a collision of the final link with an object in the robot
work environment. The toque disturbance, as shown in Figure 6 has
a duration of 0.1 seconds. Oscillation from this toque disturbance is
seen in the response of both joints one and two, however, very little
motion of the motors a and b is observed. This is due to the rela-
tively high servo gain of the motors a and 6,as can be seen in Table
1. Hence, the response of the system to this toque disturbance
depends almost completely on the bladder stiffness, and not on the
dynamics of motors a and 6,due to the fast response of these motors.
This is significant for two reasons. Firstly, the torsional stiffness of
the joint is controlled by the air pressure in the bladders only. Due to
the fast motor dynamics, the response of the motors may be ignored.
Secondly, and perhaps most significantly, the response of the hybrid
actuator to a torque disturbance causes little motion of the motors
a and b, hence, the undesirable friction effects of the cable-pulley
system are absent from the system response.
Finally, Figure 7 illustrates the results of a simulation in which
the two joint manipulator was moved through a trajectory shown in
this figure. It is seen from this simulation, that for
.k = kb = 10,OOO N/m and the control gains chosen for motors
a and b, relatively close trajectory tracking is seen. Oscillation at the
beginning and end of the trajectory of joint 2 is seen as a result of
excitation of the bladder actuator high frequency modes of oscilla-
tion. However, for the bladder stiffness of this simulation, this oscil-
lation is relatively small. Hence, approximate decoupling and linear-
izing control has been achieved.
6. CONCLUSION
This paper has presented preliminary results of a new hybrid
actuator. The hybrid actuator uses commercially available d.c. servo
motors with bladder type actuators, arranged in antagonistic pairs to
achieve the following dynamic characteristics: (i) independentjoint
torsional stiffness control and position control and (ii) approximately
decoupled linearized dynamics. Hence, the proposed hybrid actua-
tor, with an appropriatecontrol applied has very desirable properties.
The anthropomorphic feature (i) is seen to be an impoltant dynamic
characteristic to further enhance the performance of robots. It has
been demonstrated in this paper, through a suitably chosen control,
that desirable closed-loop system dynamics can be achieved with this
new actuator applied to a manipulator joint. The computed torque
technique has been implemented with the hybrid actuator in place,
utilizing high gain feedback on the servo motors, to achieve the
stated goals.
Based on preliminary results presented in this paper, the hybrid
actuation method appears to have the potential to become a viable
manipulator actuator. The resultant properties of the overall system
are highly desirable as they emulate a key anthropomorphic feature
Seen to be important to the further enhancement of manipulator per-
formance. Currently further theoretical work is under way to formu-
late control strategies that do not depend so heavily on knowledge of
the subsystem dynamic parameters. Construction of an experimental
test bed to verify the performance of this new actuation method is
currently underway.
7. REFERENCES
1. Bergamasco. M., Salsedo, F.. and Dario, P., "A Linear SMA
Motor as a Direct Drive Robotic Actuator", Pmc. IEEE Int.
Conf. on Robotics and Automation, Scottsdale, Ar., pp. 618-
623,1989.
2. Elmqvist, H., Astrom, K.J., and Schonthal,T., SIMNON User's
Guide, Department of Automatic Control, Lund Institute of
Technology, Sweden, 1986.
3. Fortmann, T.E., and Hitz, K.L., An Introduction to Linear Con-
trol Systems, Marcel Dekker Inc., 1977.
4. Freund. E., "Fast Nonlinear Control With Arbitrary Pole-
Placement For Industrial Manipulators", Int. J. of Robotics
Research, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 65-78, 1982.
5. Hogan, N., "Adaptive Stiffness Control in Human Movement",
1979 Advances in Bioengineering,M.K. Wells, ed., New York,
ASME, pp. 53-54, 1979.
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877
Figure 1: Possible configuration of bladder actuators

I' r.4..
'"I.

Figure 2: Proposed hybrid actuator

Figure 3: Hybrid actuator operational mode

%*-- , :;kz:.

Figure 4:
I
Hybrid actuator applied to two
degree of freedom manipulator

Figure 5:
- &
?r
Joint position response to bladder stiffness change

Figure 7: System response to trajectory input

Figure 6: System response to toque disturbance at joint two