Gravity Compensator for the Roll-pitch Rotation

This paper presents a gravity compensator for the manipulator of a service robot. The manipulator of a service robot is operated with low velocity for the safety reason in most cases. In this situation gravitational torques generated by the mass of links are often much greater than dynamic torques for motion. A gravity compensator can counterbalance the gravitational torques, thereby enabling to utilize relatively low power motors. In this paper the gravity compensation for the roll-pitch rotation is considered which is often used for the shoulder joints of the manipulator of a service robot or humanoid robot. A gimbals is implemented and two 1-dof gravity compensators are equipped at the base. One compensates the gravitational torque at the roll joint and another provides the compensational torque for the gimbals. Various analyses showed that the proposed compensator can counterbalance the gravitational torques of 87% at the pitch joint and 50% at the roll joint. It is verified from dynamic simulations that the proposed compensator effectively counterbalances the gravitational torques.