Latest Papers

ASME Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics

  • Mechanical Characterization of Supernumerary Robotic Tails for Human Balance Augmentation
    on August 31, 2023 at 12:00 am

    AbstractHumans are intrinsically unstable in quiet stance from a rigid body system viewpoint; however, they maintain balance, thanks to neuro-muscular sensory control properties. With increasing levels of balance related incidents in industrial and ageing populations globally each year, the development of assistive mechanisms to augment human balance is paramount. This work investigates the mechanical characteristics of kinematically dissimilar one and two degrees-of-freedom (DoF) supernumerary robotic tails for balance augmentation. Through dynamic simulations and manipulability assessments, the importance of variable coupling inertia in creating a sufficient reaction torque is highlighted. It is shown that two-DoF tails with solely revolute joints are best suited to address the balance augmentation issue. Within the two-DoF options, the characteristics of open versus closed loop tails are investigated, with the ultimate design selection requiring trade-offs between environmental workspace, biomechanical factors, and manufacturing ease to be made.

Efficient Computation of Large Deformation of Spatial Flexure-Based Mechanisms in Design Optimizations

Abstract

Design optimizations of flexure-based mechanisms take a lot of computation time, in particular when large deformations are involved. In an optimization procedure, statically deformed configurations of many designs have to be obtained, while finding the statically deformed configuration itself requires tens to hundreds of load step iterations. The kinematically started deformation method (KSD-method) (Dwarshuis, K. S., Aarts, R. G. K. M., Ellenbroek, M. H. M., and Brouwer, D. M., 2020, “Kinematically Started Efficient Position Analysis of Deformed Compliant Mechanisms Utilizing Data of Standard Joints,” Mech. Mach. Theory, 152, p. 103911) computes deformed configurations fast by starting the computation from an approximation. This approximation is obtained by allowing the mechanism only to move in the compliant motion-direction, based on kinematic equations, using data of the flexure joints in the mechanism. This is possible as flexure-based mechanisms are typically designed to be kinematically determined in the motion directions. In this paper, the KSD-method is extended such that it can also be applied without joint-data, such that it is not necessary to maintain a database with joint-data. This paper also shows that the method can be used for mechanisms containing joints that allow full spatial motion. Several variants of the KSD-method are presented and evaluated for accuracy and required computation time. One variant, which uses joint-data, is 21 times faster and shows errors in stress and stiffness below 1% compared to a conventional multibody analysis on the same model. Another variant, which does not use joint-data, reduces the computation time by a factor of 14, keeping errors below 1%. The KSD-method is shown to be helpful in design optimizations of complex flexure mechanisms for large range of motion.

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