Development of Bidirectional Series Elastic Actuator with Torsion Coil Spring and Implementation to the Legged Robot

TL;DR

This paper presents a lightweight, bidirectional series elastic actuator with a torsion coil spring, designed for small legged robots, demonstrating effective shock absorption, precise force measurement, and enabling dynamic movements like hopping.

Contribution

It introduces a novel coil spring-based SEA with a simple fixing method, suitable for small robots, and verifies its effectiveness through a practical legged robot application.

Findings

SEA effectively absorbs shocks and reuses energy.

The robot achieved flexible landing and continuous hopping.

Force measurement accuracy was confirmed in both rotational directions.

Abstract

Many studies have been conducted on Series Elastic Actuators (SEA) for robot joints because they are effective in terms of flexibility, safety, and energy efficiency. The ability of SEA to robustly handle unexpected disturbances has raised expectations for practical applications in environments where robots interact with humans. On the other hand, the development and commercialization of small robots for indoor entertainment applications is also actively underway, and it is thought that by using SEA in these robots, dynamic movements such as jumping and running can be realized. In this work, we developed a small and lightweight SEA using coil springs as elastic elements. By devising a method for fixing the coil spring, it is possible to absorb shock and perform highly accurate force measurement in both rotational directions with a simple structure. In addition, to verify the effectiveness of the developed SEA, we created a small single-legged robot with SEA implemented in the three joints of the hip, knee, and ankle, and we conducted a drop test. By adjusting the initial posture and control gain of each joint, we confirmed that flexible landing and continuous hopping are possible with simple PD position control. The measurement results showed that SEA is effective in terms of shock absorption and energy reuse. This work was performed for research purposes only.