Research on the Development of an Abdominal Massage Robot: Diversified Manipulation Strategies and Improved Force Interaction Performance

Abdominal massage for constipation has problems such as high labor costs, insufficient standardization, and large differences in efficacy. This study aims to develop a new type of abdominal massage robot to break through the bottlenecks of manual abdominal massage. This paper constructs a new six-degree-of-freedom multi-functional abdominal massage robot system, improves and designs a new series-parallel hybrid mechanical structure, and based on this, establishes an abdominal interaction force control strategy that uses a variable-stiffness physical model to represent the biomechanical properties of the abdomen. Verified by simulation and human experiments, this robot can accurately reproduce a variety of massage techniques, and demonstrate stable force control performance in prosthesis experiments and human abdominal tests, with the interaction force error controlled within 0.8 N, providing an innovative path for the intelligentization and standardization of clinical abdominal massage.