Design and Control of a Variable Stiffness Actuator for Safe and Fast Physical Human/Robot Interaction

This paper is concerned with the design and control of actuators for machines and robots physically interacting with humans, implementing criteria established in our previous work [1] on optimal mechanical-control co-design for intrinsically safe, yet performant machines. In our Variable Impedance Actuation (VIA) approach, actuators control in real-time both the reference position and the mechanical impedance of the moving parts in the machine in such a way to optimize performance while intrinsically guaranteeing safety. In this paper we describe an implementation of such concepts, consisting of a novel electromechanical Variable Stiffness Actuation (VSA) motor. The design and the functioning principle of the VSA are reported, along with the analysis of its dynamic behavior. A novel scheme for feedback control of this device is presented, along with experimental results showing performance and safety of a one-link arm actuated by the VSA motor.