Development of Actuator Using Metal Hydride for Force Display to Elbow Joint

Abstract

With the objective of developing the techniques of artificial reality sense and the tele-existence, this paper describes force display for presenting the sense of force to an elbow joint. The attempted to develop an actuator which is compact (20mmø), lightweight (300g), and has adequate compliance utilizing a metal hydride (MH). In addition, they tried to practically apply it to a force display. This actuator can raise a substance of 10kg up to a height of 50mm at a speed of 9mm/sec using a MH alloy of 6g, and its compliance characteristics have almost same trend as those of a man's elbow joint. The authors actually fitted this actuator to a man's elbow joint and confirmed that the actuator can present the force sense information with a realistic feeling.