Design of a Variable Stiffness Joint for a Five-Bar-Mechanism

Maria Guadalupe Contreras-Calderón, Eduardo Castillo-Castañeda

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

4 Scopus citations

Abstract

Variable stiffness actuators have been developed as an alternative to rigid actuators and have been implemented in human-robot interaction tasks such as industrial or assistance tasks to improve the dynamic performance of robots. This paper presents a new design of a variable stiffness joint to generate resistance to movement in the end-effector of a mechanism. The design is based on the cantilever beam principle, where the beam presents a flexion when applying a force and that keeps its stiffness constant. Movable support is implemented, which slides through the beam and allows to vary its flexion according to the movable support distance that is proportional to the stiffness. Also, tests have been performed with the rotational joint, where the end of the beam has been fixed on the rotational joint axis and the link is rotated to a specific angle to study the contribution of stiffness in the resistance to movement of the end-effector link.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)54-63
Number of pages10
JournalMechanisms and Machine Science
Volume84
DOIs
StatePublished - 2020

Keywords

  • Cantilever beam
  • Five-bar mechanism
  • Resistance force
  • Variable stiffness joint

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