Servovalves are compact, accurate and high-bandwidth modulating valves widely used in aerospace, defence, industrial and marine applications. However, manufacturing costs are high due to high part count and tight tolerances required, particularly in the first stage of the valve, and due to manual adjustments required as part of the set-up process. In this research, a novel servovalve concept is investigated that has the potential to be more cost-effective. In particular, for the first time, a piezoelectric first-stage actuator is developed to move a servovalve spool using the deflector jet principle; this is especially suited to aerospace actuation requirements. In the new valve, the conventional electromagnetic torque motor is replaced by a multilayer bimorph piezoelectric actuator. The bimorph deflects a jet of fluid to create a pressure differential across the valve spool; hence the spool moves. A feedback wire is used to facilitate proportional spool position control via mechanical feedback. The bimorph is directly coupled to the feedback wire and is immersed in hydraulic fluid. A high-order non-linear model of the valve has been developed and used to predict valve static and dynamic characteristics and is described in this article. This makes use of stiffness constants derived analytically for the bimorph-feedback wire assembly and cross-referenced to finite element analysis predictions. The model of the flow force acting on the deflector is an approximation of the force characteristic found from computation fluid dynamic analysis. The measured characteristics of the prototype valve are in good agreement with the simulation results and prove that the operational concept is viable.

Hydraulic actuation is the most widely used alternative to electric motors for legged robots and manipulators. It is often selected for its high power density, robustness and highbandwidth control performance that allows the implementation of force/impedance control. Force control is crucial for robots that are in contact with the environment, since it enables the implementation of active impedance and whole body control that can lead to a better performance in known and unknown environments. This paper presents the hydraulic Integrated Smart Actuator (ISA) developed by Moog in collaboration with IIT, as well as smart manifolds for rotary hydraulic actuators. The ISA consists of an additive-manufactured body containing a hydraulic cylinder, servo valve, pressure/position/load/temperature sensing, overload protection and electronics for control and communication. The ISA v2 and ISA v5 have been specifically designed to fit into the legs of IIT's hydraulic quadruped robots HyQ and HyQ-REAL, respectively. The key features of these components tackle 3 of today's main challenges of hydraulic actuation for legged robots through: (1) built-in controllers running inside integrated electronics for high-performance control, (2) low-leakage servo valves for reduced energy losses, and (3) compactness thanks to metal additive manufacturing. The main contributions of this paper are the derivation of the representative dynamic models of these highly integrated hydraulic servo actuators, a control architecture that allows for highbandwidth force control and their experimental validation with application-specific trajectories and tests. We believe that this is the first work that presents additive-manufactured, highly integrated hydraulic smart actuators for robotics.

Servovalves are compact, accurate, fast flow modulating valves. However, cost reduction pressures exist, not least due to the electomagnetically actuated pilot stage. This paper describes a servovalve with a jet deflector pilot stage actuated by a multilayer piezoelectric bimorph. The electrical power and voltage requirements are relatively low (+/−30V), and mechanical spool feedback is used as opposed to the more complex electrical feedback alternative. A mathematical model of the valve is presented, which is used to simulate its performance. Finite element analysis is used to model the bimorph actuator and the feedback wire assembly to verify an Euler-Bernoulli beam analysis. A Moog 26 Series servovalve is used as a basis for the prototype. Experimental test results are in good agreement with the simulation results. The high order nonlinear model is also approximated by a first order transfer function to identify the parameters that dictate the main design tradeoffs.

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