Host: The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
Name : [in Japanese]
Date : May 10, 2017 - May 13, 2017
Toward high performance torque controllability and durability of the hydraulic robots, we effectively combine soft actuators with force-controlled hydraulic servo actuators. This paper proposes a parallel-coupled drive with the servo actuators and artificial rubber muscles, where the servo actuators control the force in a nominal dynamic range and the muscles work as a controllable spring for shock absorption. At the impact moment, we force the pressurized liquid in the cylinder chamber run into the tank port so that the surge pressure is mitigated. As a specific example, we verify the idea on a landing-shock absorption scenario for dynamic legged robots. The initial experimental results using an ankle joint testbench installed with a hydraulic artificial muscle showed that the proposed method reduces the impulsive joint torque by 20 % and the internal pressure of the chamber by 70 % compared with the conventional single drive.
