Design and Experimental Validation of a 2DOF Sidestick Powered by Hyper-Redundant Magnetorheological Actuators Providing Active Feedback

Abstract

Haptic joysticks for man-machine interaction used in aerospace flight control have highly demanding requirements of reliability, force density, and high dynamics that can hardly be met with conventional electromagnetic actuators. This work explores the potential of using an alternative actuation strategy based on hyper-redundant MR clutches that modulate the force of a tendon-driven 2-degree-of-freedom spherical gimbal. A system design and its closed-loop force control scheme are proposed. Experimental results for an open-loop characterization, static force control and dynamic force control are set out and compared with typical requirements for such devices from the literature. Results show that the proposed architecture leads to one of the lightest systems reported in the literature that has the potential to meet reliability requirements by providing a jam-free design with duplex fault tolerance, and yet, can generate high force levels while providing enough force resolution. The approach is promising and can extend to high-performance collaborative robot applications.