A New Design of a Variable Stiffness Joint

Abstract

Soft or compliant robots are the key to safe interaction between humans and robots. To protect humans and robots from impact and to adapt to different tasks, researchers have developed many different variable stiffness joints, which include springs and can adjust stiffnesses between soft and rigid. The lever and the cam disc are two popular methods, that have been applied to many variable stiffness joints. This paper presents a new variable stiffness joint. This joint uses these two popular methods, to combine the both advantages, and overcome their disadvantages. This paper introduces the mechanical design and model of the new variable stiffness joint. The functionality is demonstrated by a prototype, and results are also reported here.