Development of a hot gas actuator for self-powered robots

Author

Goldfarb, Michael ; Barth, Eric J. ; Gogola, Michael A. ; Wehrmeyer, J.A.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Mech. Eng., Vanderbilt Univ., Nashville, TN, USA

Volume

1

fYear

2003

fDate

14-19 Sept. 2003

Firstpage

188

Abstract

This paper describes the design of a liquid-propellant-powered hot-gas actuator appropriate for human-scale power-autonomous robots. A prototype of the actuation system is described, and closed-loop tracking data is shown that demonstrates good motion control. Experiments to characterize the energetic performance of the actuation system indicate that the proposed system with a diluted propellant offers an energetic figure of merit five times greater than a battery-powered by undiluted propellant would offer an energetic figure of merit an order of magnitude greater than battery-powered DC motor actuated systems.

Keywords

closed loop systems; electric propulsion; manipulators; motion control; pneumatic actuators; power supplies to apparatus; prototypes; actuation system prototype; closed-loop tracking data; diluted propellant; energetic figure of merit; human-scale power-autonomous robots; liquid-propellant-powered hot-gas actuator; motion control; self-powered robots; Actuators; Batteries; Control systems; DC motors; Energy conversion; Humanoid robots; Mobile robots; Power generation; Power supplies; Propulsion;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Robotics and Automation, 2003. Proceedings. ICRA '03. IEEE International Conference on

ISSN

1050-4729

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7736-2

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ROBOT.2003.1241594

Filename

1241594