Low cost, high performance actuators for dynamic robots

The recent growth of the remote control airplane and drone market has created great availability of extremely cheap, yet very power and torque dense electric motors. However, these motors have for the most part been neglected by the robotics community. This thesis documents the development of a hardware, firmware, and controls platform for using these motors in robotics applications - specifically for running robots. A sampling of these motors were characterized, and appropriate position sensing, power electronics and field-oriented motor control systems for torque, position, and impedance control of the motors was developed. Additionally, a module which combines motor, electronics, and single-stage planetary gearset was designed and fabricated. For demonstration, a pair of these motor-controller- gearbox modules were incorporated in a 2-degree- of-freedom leg capable of jumping and controlling its joint impedances.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2016

Author dc:creator

• Katz, Benjamin G

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Sangbae Kim.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/105580

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/105580