Development of a massage robot for medical therapy

This paper addresses the development of a robotic system that can provide basic massage manipulations for medical therapy. A PUMA 562 robot is employed to perform the massage task through a properly controlled end-effector following the desired trajectories. The present work includes studying the massage mechanism and the features of the PUMA 562, generating the proper trajectories, and designing the control laws so that the robot can provide the ideal massage movement with proper force. The proposed algorithms are verified through data collected using a compliant surface representing human tissue.