TY - CONF T1 - Design and characterization of a novel high-compliance spring for robots with soft joints T2 - IEEE International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM) Y1 - 2017 A1 - F. Negrello A1 - M. G. Catalano A1 - M. Garabini A1 - M. Poggiani A1 - D. G. Caldwell A1 - N. G. Tsagarakis A1 - A. Bicchi KW - Robotics AB -

Low stiffness elements have a number of applications in Soft Robotics, from Series Elastic Actuators (SEA) to torque sensors for compliant systems. In its general formulation, the design problem of elastic components is complex and depends on several variables: material properties, load range, shape factor and size constraints. Consequently, most of the spring designs presented in literature are based on heuristics or are optimized for specific working conditions. This work presents the design study and characterization of a scalable spoked elastic element with hinge tip constraints. We compared the proposed design with three existing spring principles, showing that the spoked solution is the convenient option for low-stiffness and low shape factor elastic elements. Therefore, a design analysis on the main scaling parameters of the spoked spring, namely number of spokes and type of constraints, is presented. Finally, an experimental characterization has been conducted on physical prototypes. The agreement among simulations and experimental results demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed concept.

JF - IEEE International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM) PB - IEEE CY - Munich, Germany, 3-7 July 2017 UR - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8014029/ ER -