Optimal Design of Flexible-Link Mechanisms With Desired Load-Displacement Profiles

Robot mechanisms that exploit compliance can perform complex tasks under uncertainty using simple control strategies, but it remains difficult to design mechanisms with a desired embodied intelligence. In this article, we propose an automated design technique that optimizes the desired load-displacement behavior of planar flexible-link mechanisms. To do so, we replace a subset of rigid with flexible links in an existing mechanism, and optimize their rest shape. We demonstrate the efficacy of our approach on a set of examples, including two fabricated prototypes, illustrating applications for grasping and locomotion tasks.

I. Introduction

Compliant mechanisms bear the potential to build robots that can locomote in varied and uncertain terrain, or manipulators that can pick up vastly different objects using a single, simple control strategy. However, it remains challenging to design mechanisms that have a desired embodied intelligence [1], meaning that the right amount of compliance is introduced so that a fixed control strategy remains functional for a user-specified range of interaction-induced forces or displacements.