Design and Development of a Rotary Serial Elastic Actuator for Humanoid Arms

摘要

The paper discusses the design of a novel serial elastic actuator (SEA) which is used as the revolute joint in humanoid arms. First, characteristics and requirements of SEA are illustrated. And the elastic element is further analyzed using the design of experiment (DOE) method. Then, a discoid elastic element with larger flexibility is developed. Based on this, an integrated SEA containing the position sensors and the torque sensor is developed. And also, a 7-DOF humanoid arm with joint flexibilities is designed. Finally, experiments of SEA demonstrate the approximation of the stiffness between the desired SEA and the prototype.