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的机器人应用中广泛采用液压驱动的三个基本挑战：效率低、可控性差和运行噪音大。组件级和系统级创新将结合起来，形成一种新颖的集成式液压驱动方法，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。液压研究是重要的，因为没有其他驱动技术已经接近匹配的功率密度（强度X速度/重量）的液压系统，功率密度是至关重要的机器人打算做真实的工作。更广泛的影响/商业潜力的这个项目是大的，如果传统上限制采用液压驱动技术的挑战可以克服。它将为这种驱动技术开辟全新的应用范围，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，提升和携带物体成为可能。这将使许多市场领域受益，例如针对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（如土方设备和航空）都将从液压效率的显著提高中受益，节省数百万美元的燃料，并防止无数吨的碳被释放到大气中。初步分析表明，在许多应用中，效率可以提高10倍以上。这项研究的成功将使液压技术成为一项绿色技术。

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.