Development of an inflatable robotic arm system controlled by a joystick

This paper presents an inflatable robotic arm controlled by a joystick to be used for healthcare applications. The arm is constructed almost entirely of plastic elements: inflatable links, air bag actuators, and acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) joints. Therefore, it is softer and lighter than typical robotic arms that are made of metal and heavy elements. Because the softness and lightness of the inflatable robotic arm is intrinsically safer, it is suitable for healthcare applications. In this paper, a new control method is proposed which allows the inflatable system to be controlled with a joystick. To verify the usefulness of the proposed method, we used an inflatable robotic arm with four degrees of freedom (4 DOF) to obtain experimental results for the control performance of the inflatable robotic arm. Moreover, we conducted preliminary tests which simulated patients controlling the robotic arm with a joystick in order to assist with eating their meals.