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19 March 2011 Walking with springs
Thomas G. Sugar, Kevin W. Hollander, Joseph K. Hitt
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Proceedings Volume 7976, Electroactive Polymer Actuators and Devices (EAPAD) 2011; 797602 (2011) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.882214
Event: SPIE Smart Structures and Materials + Nondestructive Evaluation and Health Monitoring, 2011, San Diego, California, United States
Abstract
Developing bionic ankles poses great challenges due to the large moment, power, and energy that are required at the ankle. Researchers have added springs in series with a motor to reduce the peak power and energy requirements of a robotic ankle. We developed a "robotic tendon" that reduces the peak power by altering the required motor speed. By changing the required speed, the spring acts as a "load variable transmission." If a simple motor/gearbox solution is used, one walking step would require 38.8J and a peak motor power of 257 W. Using an optimized robotic tendon, the energy required is 21.2 J and the peak motor power is reduced to 96.6 W. We show that adding a passive spring in parallel with the robotic tendon reduces peak loads but the power and energy increase. Adding a passive spring in series with the robotic tendon reduces the energy requirements. We have built a prosthetic ankle SPARKy, Spring Ankle with Regenerative Kinetics, that allows a user to walk forwards, backwards, ascend and descend stairs, walk up and down slopes as well as jog.
© (2011) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
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Thomas G. Sugar, Kevin W. Hollander, and Joseph K. Hitt "Walking with springs", Proc. SPIE 7976, Electroactive Polymer Actuators and Devices (EAPAD) 2011, 797602 (19 March 2011); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.882214
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KEYWORDS
Robotics
Gait analysis
Actuators
Lead
Data modeling
Biomimetics
Motion models
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