SBIR Phase I: High Performance Hydraulic Actuation for Mobile Robots

这个小型企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目解决了在小型移动机器人应用中广泛采用液压驱动的三个基本挑战：效率低、可控性差和运行噪声大。组件级和系统级的创新将结合为一种新颖的、集成的液压驱动方法，以克服这些挑战。自20世纪50年代以来，水力学研究受到的关注相对较少，因此有很大的改进机会。液压研究很重要，因为没有其他驱动技术能与液压系统的功率密度（强度X速度/重量）相匹配，而功率密度对机器人的实际工作至关重要。如果能够克服传统上限制液压驱动技术采用的挑战，该项目的广泛影响/商业潜力将是巨大的。它将为这种驱动技术开辟一个全新的应用范围，并首次使具有人类/超人能力的机器人在非结构化环境中操纵、举起和搬运物体成为可能。这将使许多市场部门受益，如老龄化人口的辅助技术、仓库自动化、搜索和救援、建筑、安全、娱乐和灵活的工厂自动化等等。除此之外，目前使用液压驱动的任何现有行业（如土方移动设备和航空）都将从液压效率的显著提高中受益匪浅，节省了数百万美元的燃料，并防止了数不清的碳排放到大气中。初步分析表明，在许多应用中，效率可以提高10倍以上。这项研究如果成功，将使水力学成为一项绿色技术。

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project addresses three fundamental challenges to the broad adoption of hydraulic actuation in small mobile robotic applications: poor efficiency, poor controllability, and noisy operation. Component level and system level innovations will be combined for a novel, integrated approach to hydraulic actuation which overcomes these challenges. Hydraulics research has received relatively little attention since the 1950's, hence there are significant opportunities for improvement. Hydraulics research is important because no other actuation technology has come close to matching the power-density (strength X speed / weight) of hydraulic systems, and power density is critical for robots intended to do real work.The broader impact/commercial potential of this project is large if the challenges that have traditionally limited the adoption of hydraulic actuation technology can be overcome. It will open up a whole new range of applications for this actuation technology and for the first time make possible robots with human/super-human abilities to manipulate, lift and carry objects in unstructured environments. This will benefit numerous market sectors such as assistive technologies for aging populations, warehouse automation, search and rescue, construction, security, entertainment, and flexible factory automation to name a few. In addition to this, any existing sector that currently utilizes hydraulic actuation (such as earth moving equipment and aviation) will benefit significantly from the significantly improved hydraulic efficiency saving millions of dollars in fuel and preventing untold tons of carbon from being released into the atmosphere. Preliminary analysis has show that over 10X improvement in efficiency is achievable in many applications. This research if successful will make hydraulics a green technology.