Design and Experimental Validation of a 3D Printed Torsional Series Elastic Actuator for Safe Human Robot Interaction

📅 2026-09-16
📈 Citations: 0
Influential: 0
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🤖 AI Summary
为确保人机交互安全,设计并验证了一种3D打印的低刚度扭转弹簧系列弹性执行器,并通过混合位置控制器实现对外部干扰的安全响应。
📝 Abstract
Ensuring intrinsic safety in physical human robot interaction (pHRI) is a critical requirement for social and service robots. While Series Elastic Actuators (SEAs) offer hardware based compliance, traditional metallic designs often require complex, multi part assemblies. This paper presents the design, finite element analysis (FEA), and experimental validation of a low stiffness, torsional spring for SEAs, manufactured via 3D printed thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU). The compliant element exhibits a highly linear torque deformation response (Ks = 0.066 Nm/degree), matching numerical predictions with under 3% deviation, a variance attributed to FDM structural anisotropy. To accommodate external interactions using standard position limited servomotors, a hybrid position controller with torque threshold switching was implemented. Experimental evaluations demonstrate the system ability to accurately track non stationary trajectories and safely yield to external disturbances. Furthermore, the inherent material damping of the TPU acts as a passive low pass filter, preventing high frequency oscillations during control mode transitions. The proposed architecture offers a cost effective, reliable, and easily manufacturable solution for safe pHRI.
Problem

Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.

physical human robot interaction
intrinsic safety
Series Elastic Actuators
compliance
multi part assemblies
Innovation

Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.

3D printed TPU
torsional series elastic actuator
linear torque deformation response
hybrid position controller
inherent material damping
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