MODEL VALIDATION AND TREND STUDY OF A TWIN ELECTRO-RHEOLOGICAL (ER) CLUTCH MECHANISM FOR ROBOTIC APPLICATIONS

摘要

Positioning accuracies of the robot arms are important at fast maneuvering speeds of the manipulators. In the past, many researchers had investigated the precisions of the robotic arms. They reported that these robotic positioning errors are caused by the dynamic inefficiencies of the robotic actuators; DC servomotors. Therefore, in order to resolve this actuator's issue, a twin electro-rheological (ER) clutch mechanism that consists of two counter-rotating ER clutches is employed. This is due to its output dynamics being unaffected by the output cogging torque of the driving motors. Also, this clutch mechanism can perform rapid reversal responses in bi-directional mode. In this present paper, two kinematics models that describe the output angular velocity and displacement behaviors of this clutch mechanism undergone validations. Next, the trend studies of these angular kinematics responses are conducted in order to determine the methodology to generate the fastest reversal motions of the clutch mechanism.