Miniature Jumping Robot Using SMA Coil Actuators and Composite Materials

Steerable miniature jumping robot

Jumping is used in nature by many small animals to locomote in cluttered environments or in rough terrain. It offers small systems the benefit of overcoming relatively large obstacles at a low energetic cost. In order to be able to perform repetitive jumps in a given direction, it is important to be able to upright after landing, steer and jump again. In this article, we review and evaluate the...

Walking Pattern Filter for Dynamic Biped Robot with Sma Actuators

In this paper we present a walking pattern filter for Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) actuated biped robots. SMAs are known for their slow response. The actuation speed limitation can potentially lead to stability problems for biped robots. This filter adapts the human motion for a SMA biped in order to have a stable walking pattern. The Zero Moment Point (ZMP) is used as a main criterion of the filte...

Spin crossover composite materials for electrothermomechanical actuators

Shape Memory Alloy (sma) Coil Actuators for Use in Controllable Mechanical Counter-pressure (mcp) Space Suits

Mechanical counter-pressure (MCP) space suits, which apply pressure to the wearer using tight-fitting materials rather than pressurized gas, offer numerous mobility and mass advantages over traditional gas-pressurized suits [1]. However, MCP design challenges related to pressure uniformity, pressure magnitude, and donning/doffing remain unsolved [2]. Previous MCP efforts have focused on passive...

Improving the Response of SMA Actuators

Shape memory alloy (SMA) based actuators have a number of attributes which make them useful for robotic applications. Unfortunately their response is relatively slow, being limited by the speed with which the SMA can be heated and cooled. This paper describes two novel developments of the basic SMA actuator which improve dynamic performance. To allow rapid heating of the shape memory alloy wire...