A new type of humanoid robot arm which can coexist and be interactive with human beings are looked for. For the purpose of implementation of human smooth and fast movement to a pneumatic robot, the author used a humanoid robot arm with pneumatic agonist-antagonist actuators as endoskeletons which has control mechanism in the stiffness of each joint, and the controllability was experimentally discussed. Using Kitamori 's method to experimentally decide the control gains and using I-PD controller, three joints of the humanoid robot arm were experimentally controlled. The damping control algorithm was also adopted to the wrist joint, to modify the speed in accordance with the power. The results showed that the controllability to step-wise input was less than one degree in error to follow the target angles, and the time constant was less than one second. The simultaneous input of command to three joints was brought about the overshoot of about ten percent increase in error. The humanoid robot arm can generate the calligraphic motions, moving quickly at some times but slowly at other times, or particularly softly on some occasions but stiffly on other occasions at high accuracy.

Pneumatic pressure, which is easy enough to be handled in comparison with hydraulic pressure and is endowed with high safety, is available for a power source of a robot arm to be utilized in concert with human beings to do various types of work. But pneumatic pressure is so low in comparison with hydraulic pressure that an air cylinder having a diameter long enough and stroke wide enough is required to obtain great output power. In this study, therefore, the investigation was made with layout of air cylinders and transmission mechanisms of the motion power directed toward the driving joints to be followed by development of a new humanoid robot arm with seven degrees of freedom in which air cylinders are compactly incorporated. To be concrete with this, contrivance was made with an endoskeleton structure allowing almost all of the structure materials of the individual arm joints to be shared by the air cylinder with incorporation of the air cylinder in the axes of the upper arm joint and forearm joints by paying attention to the fact that the cylinder itself has high strength. The evaluation experiments driving the robot arm referred to above were conducted by means of I-PD control. The results suggested that the mechanism of the robot with seven degrees of freedom having pneumatic actuators proposed in this study is useful as the humanoid robot arm. The quick and accurate motions were accomplished with I-PD control which is relatively easy to be dealt with but not suitable for non-linear actuator system.