A Spring-Aided Two-Dimensional Electromechanical Spine Architecture for Bio-Inspired Robots

This paper presents a distributed six-link two-dimensional electromechanical actuator that emulates a biological spine. The gearless actuator is made by stacking modules of E-shaped cores along with integrated springs. A coil excitation induces magnetic flux in the core, which produces electromechanical force in the air gap between two adjacent cores. The proposed actuator is driven by dc-dc converters with current control. Electromechanical force analysis for the proposed spine architecture with different air-gap distances and spring analysis that improve the actuator's performance are discussed. Experimental results show different biological motions with a prototype design. The prototype can produce a maximum torque of 1.4 N-m.