Actuators intended for human–machine interaction systems are usually designed to be mechanically compliant. Conventional actuators are not suitable for this purpose due to typically high stiffness. Advanced powered prosthetic and orthotic devices can vary their stiffness during a motion cycle and are power-efficient. This paper proposes a novel actuator design that modulates stiffness by means of a flexible beam. A motorized drive system varies the active length of the cantilever beam, thus achieving stiffness modulation. New large deflection formulation for cantilever beams with rolling contact constraints is used to determine the moment produced by the actuator. To validate the proposed solution method, an experiment was performed to measure large static deformations of a cantilever beam with the same boundary conditions as in the actuator design. The experiments indicate excellent agreement between measured and calculated contact forces between beam and roller, from which the actuator moment is determined.

This paper focuses on the design, modeling and basic control of a variable stiffness actuator to be used in combination with a regenerative electromechanical drive system. Due to the use of a flexible beam, the actuator has the ability to store and return elastic potential energy. Also, an ultracapacitor is used in the electromechanical drive, which allows electrical energy storage and return. Moreover, elastic and electrostatic energies can be exchanged, resulting in a highly efficient and lightweight design which will be beneficial for robotic prostheses, exoskeletons and other orthotic devices. The paper presents a model and calculation method for large beam deflections and the integrated electromechanical actuator model. A semiactive virtual control strategy is used to decouple the mechanical dynamics from the charge dynamics and achieve position control of the actuator. Simulation results are presented to illustrate the control system and the energy exchange features.

The wheelchair wheelie is a maneuver employed to overcome obstacles and descend ramps, for instance. The task is similar to the stabilization problem of an inverted pendulum that is extensively described in the control theory literature. However, in this case, the goal is to maintain the user and the wheelchair in equilibrium on wheels, which is achieved when the center of mass of the system is aligned with the rear axle in the vertical direction. This work investigates a controller to perform the wheelie in power-assisted wheelchairs using optimal control theory and a model of the user and wheelchair system. The proposed approach leads to a controller capable of rising the wheelchair, which is able to reject perturbations and which is robust to typical parameter uncertainties.