Proposal of Static Friction Measuring Method and Experimental Investigation of Static Friction Characteristic of Belt-Formed Pulley for Variable Joint Stiffness on Tendon-Driven Robot

Abstract

The belt-formed pulley is a nonlinear spring device. Inserting the belt-formed pulleys into the route of wires, joint stiffness of the tendon-driven robot can be varied depending on internal force among wires. The system using belt-formed pulleys has many advantage such as low cost, low friction, light and so on, compared with other devices to vary joint stiffness. However, little is quantitatively known about static frictional property of belt-formed pulleys. In this paper, we propose the method of measuring static friction, and the static friction characteristic of the belt-formed pulley is shown through experimental result.