Actuators in Robotic Control

Dear Colleagues,

Industrial robotic applications are becoming more and more common in manufacturing companies, where automation technologies have led the progress so far. Robotics is expected to have the potential to bring disruptive innovations in the coming decades and not only in the industrial environment. At home or in a hospital, assistant robotic systems are not only supposed to substitute humans, but will also have to collaborate and interact with them. Therefore, they require different technology from the one currently in use; for example, soft robotics is a new field in robotics which is being used to deal with the demand. To make all of the components in the robot soft and flexible, the actuators should provide their movements in limited spaces and change gaits fairly easily.

Actuators are essential devices in these robotics and automation systems; in particular, humanoid/legged robots have different needs compared to industrial robots. To meet these different needs, many researchers have developed new types of actuator. The future of robotics will rely heavily on actuators with force/torque control. For robotic systems, how to manipulate fragile items as humans can do is a big and challenging task. Electric actuators are suitable for this purpose, but they are not yet optimized. As a matter of fact, robotic arms and legs should reproduce the ability of human arms and legs on several levels. However, human muscles in limbs can also store energy and have a sort of internal elasticity. To reproduce the behaviors in human muscles, one or more elastic elements are inserted into electric actuators. The implementations of soft actuators exhibit high mechanical complexity and their size, weight, and cost prevent their widespread use. As a result, their application to multi-degree-of-freedom robotic machines still remains an open issue and a challenging task.

Prof. Dr. Chih Jer Lin
Guest Editor

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