Related papers: Controllable Mechanical-domain Energy Accumulators
Springs can provide force at zero net energy cost by recycling negative mechanical work to benefit motor-driven robots or spring-augmented humans. However, humans have limited force and range of motion, and motors have a limited ability to…
Springs store mechanical energy similar to batteries storing electrical energy. However, conventional springs are heavy and store limited amounts of mechanical energy relative to batteries, i.e they have low mass-energy-density.…
Spring-driven jumping robots use an energised spring for propulsion, while the onboard motor only serves as a spring-charging source. A common mechanism in designing these robots is the rhomboidal linkage, which has been combined with…
Intrinsically elastic robots surpass their rigid counterparts in a range of different characteristics. By temporarily storing potential energy and subsequently converting it to kinetic energy, elastic robots are capable of highly dynamic…
To detach a permanent magnet with a controlled force much smaller than its original attractive force, the Internally-Balanced Magnetic Unit (IB Magnet) was invented and has been applied to magnetic devices such as wall-climbing robots,…
The increasing need for sharing workspace and interactive physical tasks between robots and humans has raised concerns regarding safety of such operations. In this regard, controllable clutches have shown great potential for addressing…
Quadruped robots are often designed with rigid feet to simplify control and maintain stable contact during locomotion. While this approach is straightforward, it limits the ability of the legs to absorb impact forces and reuse stored…
The ability to convert reciprocating, i.e., alternating, actuation into rotary motion using linkages is hindered fundamentally by their poor torque transmission capability around kinematic singularity configurations. Here, we harness the…
Refrigerated truck trailers are currently mainly operated with environmentally harmful diesel units; an alternative is to operate the refrigeration unit with electrical energy. However, this requires a battery, the size of which can be…
This paper is dedicated to the development of a novel adaptive torsion spring mechanism for optimizing energy consumption in legged robots. By adjusting the equilibrium position and stiffness of the spring, the system improves energy…
Wearable robots are limited by their actuators performances because they must bear the weight of their own power system and energy source. This paper explores the idea of leveraging hybrid modes to meet multiple operating points with a…
In many robotic systems, the holding state consumes power, limits operating time, and increases operating costs. Electrostatic clutches have the potential to improve robotic performance by generating holding torques with low power…
The appealing feature of molecular electronics is the possibility of exploiting functionality built within a single molecule. This functionality can be employed, for example, for sensing or switching purposes. Thus, ideally, the associated…
Electroadhesive clutches are electrically controllable switchable adhesives commonly used in soft robots and haptic user interfaces. They can form strong bonds to a wide variety of surfaces at low power consumption. However, electroadhesive…
We consider a simple lattice spring model in which every spring is elastoplastic and is capable to conduct current. The elasticity bounds of spring $i$ are taken as $[-c_i,c_i]$ and the resistance of spring $i$ is taken as $1/c_i$, which…
We introduce a mechanical control system for energy efficient and robust hoisting crane operations. The control system efficiently translates the harmonic motion of a spring loaded mediating system into the desired driving of the load,…
We considered a novel energy storage system based on the compression of air through pumped water. Differently from CAES on trial, the proposed indirect compression leaves the opportunity to choose the kind of compression from adiabatic to…
E-powertrain of future electric vehicles could consist of energy generation units (e.g., fuel cells and photovoltaic modules), energy storage systems (e.g., batteries and supercapacitors), energy conversion units (e.g., bidirectional DC/DC…
This paper introduces a way to systematically investigate the effect of compliant prismatic spines in quadrupedal robot locomotion. We develop a novel spring-loaded lockable spine module, together with a new Spinal Compliance-Integrated…
Wearable and legged robot designers face multiple challenges when choosing actuation. Traditional fully actuated designs using electric motors are multifunctional but oversized and inefficient for bearing conservative loads and for being…