Robot arm and method of controlling the same

Abstract

Disclosed are a robot arm having high back-drivability to interact with a human being, which is safely stopped, and a method of controlling the robot arm. When the operation of the robot arm having high back-drivability to interact with a human being is converted into a safety mode due to the occurrence of an emergency, in which the operation of the robot arm is stopped, only a torque having a degree to compensate for gravity applied to the robot arm, i.e., only a torque to maintain the kinematical position of the current state of the robot arm without falling of the robot arm due to gravity, is outputted to control the robot arm as if the robot arm is in a weightless state, thus being capable of safely stopping the robot arm. Thereby, a user can easily move the robot arm and thus safely escape from the robot arm, and it is possible to prevent the falling of the robot arm due to gravity and thus to protect devices of the robot arm and peripheral environment around the robot arm.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.