Design and Implementation of a Dual Axis Motor Controller for Parallel and Serial Series Elastic Actuators

• Main Author: Ressler, Stephen Andrew
• Other Authors: Electrical and Computer Engineering
• Format: Others
• Published: Virginia Tech 2014
• Subjects: Series Elastic Actuator; Motor Controller; Humanoid Robot
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10919/47359

This paper discusses the design and implementation of a high performance, custom control solution for series elastic actuators (SEA) in a parallel or serial configuration. In many modern robotics applications, controlling actuator output force accurately and with high bandwidth is extremely important. The series elastic actuator has become popular in applications which require precise force control, however currently not many commercial options exist. Commonly, these actuators are custom designed and use electric motors, however most off-the-shelf electric motor drives are not designed for this specific application. In this paper, the hardware and software architecture of a control device designed specifically for force controlled series elastic actuators is described, along with test results on a novel SEA design. === Master of Science