Static and Dynamic Properties of a 6-DOF Robotic System for Knee Joint Biomechanics Study

The application of robotic technology to the field of joint biomechaics has started more than 20 years ago ¹⁾. Since then, a variety of studies have employed commercially available articulated manipulators for the joint biomechanical studies ^1–5). However, such articulated manipulators are generally poor at stiffness and precision although they were basically designed to achieve high speeds of motion while performing tasks in a large work space. To solve the problem, we have previously developed a robotic system consisting of a custom-made 6-degree of freedom (6-DOF) manipulator and a universal force-moment sensor (UFS) ⁶⁾. The present study was aimed to evaluate the static and dynamic properties of the system.