Synthesis and evaluation of non-circular gear that realizes optimal gear ratio for jumping robot

For the effective use of motor power, an appropriate gear ratio has to be selected according to the robot task and motion. Because a jumping robot, in particular, requires both high torque and high velocity properties through the motion, a varying gear ratio is necessary. Moreover, it has to be optimally designed and realized. In this paper, we design a jumping robot with a non-circular gear that changes the gear ratio through the motion for the higher jumping. Based on statics, the gear ratio is optimized and change of the gear ratio is obtained by a simulation-based design considering the robot dynamics. So far, we have developed a design method of no-circular gear, and its effectiveness was evaluated by simulation. In this paper, a jumping robot is prototyped, and the effectiveness is evaluated by experiment containing the robustness for the perturbation of robot parameters.