Optimal design of gear ratio using non-circular gear for jumping robot

Abstract

For the effective use of motor power, an appropriate gear ratio has to be selected according to robot tasks and motions. Because a jumping robot, in particular, requires both high torque and high velocity properties through its motion, a varying gear ratio will realize a high performance. Moreover, its varying property has to be optimally designed and realized. In this paper, we design a jumping robot with a non-circular gear which changes the gear ratio through the motion for the higher jumping. The gear ratio is optimized so that the motor power is maximized, and the change of the gear ratio is obtained based on a forward dynamical analysis. The optimized gear ratio is realized by a non-circular gear considering a constraint of pressure angle of gear teeth. A Jumping robot is protoptyped, and the effectiveness of the proposed design method is verified considering model perturbations of the physical parameters of the robot.