Gearbox technologies for robotics
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MSCA-2020-BVanderborght01
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Beschrijving van het project
Human-centered robotics is a relatively new but fast-growing field. An increasing number of factories, warehouses and construction sites are integrating these types of robots into their production lines. Typical examples from the manufacturing industry include assistive exoskeletons, collaborative robots, etc. Human-centered robots can also be found in many other fields, in particular physiotherapy, with active prostheses and -orthoses, and rehabilitation robots.
One of the major bottlenecks in the development of human-centered is the need for actuators that possess inherent safety characteristics while maintaining high-torque and high-bandwidth capabilities. A component which presents major difficulties in this regard is the gearbox, present in most electromagnetic (motor-driven) actuators. Gearboxes introduce non-linearities (backlash, friction) and tend to be highly inefficient, in particular the high-ratio gearboxes commonly used in human-centered robotics. For this reason, the Robotics and Multibody Mechanics (R&MM) research group has recently started investigating customized gearboxes.
In this field, we are currently looking for researchers to investigate the potential of novel gearbox designs with improved energy-efficiency, backdrivability and torque-to-weight ratio. Depending on your expertise and interests, the work could consist of the conception and investigation of novel gearbox concepts, mechanical design, experimental work (efficiency measurements, benchmarking etc.) or the integration of these gearboxes in wearable robots or cobots.
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Brussels Human Robotics Research Center
The Robotics & MultiBody Mechanics research group of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) started its activities in 1990. In 1995 they started the research on soft actuators in legged robots to absorb impact, interact with an unknown environment and energy efficiency. Currently, the group is well known for the design and control of variable stiffness actuators, implemented in robots with applications in physical human-robot interaction (pHRI) and cognitive HRI (cHRI). During last years, within the group were developed the compliant actuators Pleated Pneumatic Artificial Muscles (PPAM 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0), different versions of the MACCEPA actuator and the SPEA actuator, funded by an ERC Starting Grant and initiated the research towards self-healing actuators. In the ERC we worked on the ambitious breakthrough to develop a material-oriented solution by implementing self-healing (SH) materials for actuators, for which was collaborated with material scientists (VUB-FYSC).
Appropriate control architectures for soft actuators are designed for improved safety, robustness and energy efficiency. The actuators are implemented on different legged robots like the monopod OLIE, the pneumatic biped Lucy, the MACCEPA powered Veronica and H2R biped and the hopping robot Chobino1D. The research towards legged robots and Variable Stiffness Actuators also lead to the development of prostheses (ankle-foot IPPAM, AMPFOOT 1.0-4.0, currently made a spinoff company Axiles Bionics and the knee-ankle HEKTA and Cyberlegs prostheses) and exoskeletons for the lower limbs like Altacro, CORBYS, Biomot and Mirad. The research is performed from fundamental studies, towards application driven research and valorization and is core lab in the Flemish Strategic Research Center “Flanders Make” for the manufacturing industry. R&MM is the leader in the BruBOTICS consortium combining all robotics related expertise of the VUB together from exact and applied sciences (AI, sensors), human physiology and rehabilitation and social/economic studies with more than 90 academic researchers.
Recently, there is a strong trend in both the research community and in the industry toward the development of collaborative robots, the so called cobots. R&MM researchers successfully accomplished a project in manufacturing robots, the ICON Claxon during which the first coworking robot was installed on the assembly line of Audi. In another project SBO-Yves, apart from workspace sharing, also collaborative assembly is investigated, combining the strengths of both the human and the robot while taking the ergonomic load of the human into account. Finally, R&MM group is involved in studies on ergonomics: Flanders Make ICONs Ergoeyehand (improving ergonomics by cobots), ICON Smarthandler (manipulation heavy objects) and the ICON Prorob (VR/AR based robot trajectory programming to improve ergonomics and productivity).Up to now R&MM group was involved in 14 EU projects and 1 ERC grant and counts 45 researchers, working in strong multidisciplinary teams.