Development of a New Backdrivable Actuator for Haptic Interfaces and Collaborative Robots

Développement d'un nouvel actionneur réversible pour des interfaces haptiques et des robots collaboratifs

Florian Gosselin (1) , Fabien R Ferlay (2) , Alexandre Janot (3)

1 LRI - Laboratoire de Robotique Interactive
2 IRFM - Institut de Recherche sur la Fusion par confinement Magnétique
3 ONERA - The French Aerospace Lab [Toulouse]

Industrial robots are most often position controlled and insensitive to external forces. In many robotic applications, however, such as teleoperation, haptics for virtual reality, and collaborative robotics, a close cooperation between humans and robots is required. For such applications, force sensing and control capabilities are required for stable interactions with the operator and environment. The robots must also be backdrivable, i.e., the robot must be able to follow user's induced movements with the least possible resistance. High force efficiency is also desirable. These requirements are different from the design drivers of traditional industrial robots and call for specific actuators and reducers. Many such devices were proposed in the literature. However, they suffer from several drawbacks, offering either a limited reduction ratio or being complex and bulky. This paper introduces a novel solution to this problem. A new differential cable drive reducer is presented. It is backdrivable, has a high efficiency, and a potentially infinite reduction ratio. A prototype actuator using such a reducer has been developed and integrated on a test bench. The experimental characterization of its performance confirms its theoretical advantages.

Ce papier introduit un nouveau type de réducteur à câble pour l'actionnement des interfaces haptiques et des robots collaboratifs. L'actionneur est un réducteur différentiel.

Mots clés: BACKDRIVABLE ACTUATOR; HIGH REDUCTION RATIO; DIFFERENTIAL CABLE DRIVE; HAPTICS; COLLABORATIVE ROBOTS

Mots clés: NTERFACES HAPTIQUES; CONCEPTION ACTUATEUR

Domaines: Physique de l'espace [physics.space-ph]

Florian Gosselin, Fabien R Ferlay, Alexandre Janot. Development of a New Backdrivable Actuator for Haptic Interfaces and Collaborative Robots. Actuators, 2016, ⟨10.3390/act5020017⟩. ⟨hal-01353577⟩