+SPEA introduction: Drastic actuator energy requirement reduction by symbiosis of parallel motors, springs and locking mechanisms
Glenn Mathijssen, Raphael Furnemont, Tom Verstraten, Branko Brackx, Jasmina Premec, Rene Jimenez, Dirk Lefeber, Bram Vanderborght
Abstract
Modern actuation schematics become increasingly ingenious by deploying springs and locking mechanisms in series and/or parallel. Many of these solutions are, however, tailored for a specific application and a general schematic that allows for drastic energy reduction remains a challenge. We have developed a series-parallel elastic actuator (SPEA) based on a symbiosis of multiple motors, springs and locking mechanisms in parallel, which we call +SPEA. This paper introduces the novel +SPEA concept. We present a first prototype, a +SPEA model and a control strategy that optimizes the energy consumption, and experiments to verify the working principle and recruitment strategy. The experiments show a good fit with the model and currently the actuator reduces the required energy in blocked output experiments by more than a factor 4.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{icra2016_speaintroduction,
title = {+SPEA introduction: Drastic actuator energy requirement reduction by symbiosis of parallel motors, springs and locking mechanisms},
author = {Glenn Mathijssen and Raphael Furnemont and Tom Verstraten and Branko Brackx and Jasmina Premec and Rene Jimenez and Dirk Lefeber and Bram Vanderborght},
booktitle = {ICRA 2016},
year = {2016}
}