Study and Design of a Series Elastic Damped Actuator for Robotics

This thesis focuses on the analysis and design of new solutions for robotic actuation units that can handle the problem of high torque requirements, combined with the necessity for high compliance in order to embody in the actuation architecture of a robot intrinsic safety requirements, together with the capability of fast dynamic performance and strong interaction with the environment. Following the Soft Robotics Approach, a solution for this can be found in Series Elastic Actuation (SEA), actuators in which an elastic component is mounted in series the output shaft of the power transmission. In this work, I develop a new SEA unit which combines also a damping component in parallel to the elastic one, to suppress excessive oscillatory motions caused on the elastic component by external disturbances and/or imperfect control. A set of different solutions for the transmission part, the elastic component and the damping component are proposed and studied. In particular, physical prototypes of the damper system are manufactured and tested to validate their principles and assess their performance. After defining a set of functional specifications, a set of acceptable solutions is found. These solutions are then analysed accurately via Finite Elements Analysis, construction of Prototypes and Experimental benchmarking. Finally, I propose the design of a suitable modular solution for the actuation unit, in order to augment the versatility of the actuation unit, allowing for the possibility to have different configurations and combination of reduction, elastic and damping modules