Electro-Adhesive Tubular Clutch for Variable-Stiffness Robots

Sun, Yuhan; Digumarti, Krishna Manaswi; Phan, Hoang Vu; Aloui, Omar; Floreano, Dario

doi:10.1109/iros47612.2022.9982098

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…In this work, we presented a hybrid actuation system combining shape memory alloy wires with electrostatic clutches for combining large forces from SMA wires with energy-efficient actuation of the clutch. We modified a pre-existing design of an electro-adhesive tubular clutch as described by Sun et al 12 using tension springs instead for the retraction of the clutch. A test bench was presented in detail, and used to characterize the electro-mechanical performance of the device in terms of force, position, current, power and energy consumption.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The highlighted region in the graph shows spikes in the force measurements which is caused by the friction in the REATC. This friction is a result of the circumferential stresses due to the rolling process as described by Sun et al 12 in their work.…”

Section: Force Evaluationmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…For the electrostatic clutch, we selected a modified version of an existing design of the electro-adhesive tubular clutch (EATC) by Sun et al 12 We chose this design specifically for its ease of fabrication and reliable performance. In fact, due to its tubular nature, it does not require additional guides for the clutch electrodes.…”

Section: Materials and Fabricationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This serves as the motivation for the combination of electrostatic clutches and SMA actuators presented in this paper. In this paper, we present a combination of an SMA wire with a modified version of the retractable electro-adhesive tubular clutch (REATC) developed by Sun et al 12 We tested this combination in a linear characterization setup modified from Mayer et al's lifespan test bench for SMA wires. The SMA wire was actuated to move the clutch to the required position.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Shape memory alloy and electrostatic brake hybrid actuator system for energy-efficient actuation strategies

Venkatachalam,

Mayer,

Bruch

et al. 2024

Active and Passive Smart Structures and Integrated Systems XVIII

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This work presents a novel actuator system consisting of a combination of shape memory alloy (SMA) wires with electrostatic clutches. The proposed combination of smart material systems stems from the need to reduce the energy consumption of SMA based actuators while leveraging their high energy densities in compact actuation systems. To this end, large actuation forces provided by SMA wires are combined with the highly energy-efficient actuation of electrostatic clutches. The actuation of the SMA wire generates the desired motion after which the activation of the clutch and deactivation of the SMA wire ensures that the desired position is held in an energyefficient manner. A retractable electro-adhesive tubular clutch was chosen for our testing due to its enclosed nature and ease of fabrication. A characterization setup is also developed and used to demonstrate the feasibility of our new actuator concept. The tests show that a 254 µm SMA wire has an energy consumption rate of about 850.7 mJ s −1 as compared to less than 31.3 mJ s −1 for the clutch, which results in an energy savings rate of over 800 mJ s −1 for position holding tasks.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Force Evaluationmentioning

confidence: 94%

Section: Materials and Fabricationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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