Design and evaluation of 3D-printed fluid-controlled actuators with integrated valves

Fluid-controlled actuators are widely used in lower limb prostheses. Most fluid-controlled actuators have valves integrated into the cylinder systems and require complex manufacturing steps, making these systems expensive. A cost-effective production method for these complex actuator valve systems is 3D-printing. The goal of this research is to...

3D Printed Hydraulic Actuation: Design and Evaluation of a 3D Printed Hydraulic Actuation System

Objective: The objective of this study was to develop and evaluate a 3D printed hydraulic actuation system, applied in a multi-articulate upper limp prosthesis. The prosthesis was designed to produce sufficient pinch force to be competitive with comparable devices (30 N), and weigh less than a human hand (<0.43 kg). The actuator should...

Design of a Hybrid Hydraulic Actuation Mechanism for the Delft Cylinder Hand Prosthesis

The development of the Delft Cylinder Hand (DCH) demonstrated the design of a lightweight and functional hydraulic body-powered (BP) hand prostheses. The low friction losses of the hydraulics make it an attractive alternative to a classical mechanic transmission using rigid linkages and Bowden cables. There are benefits and trade-offs associated...

Challenges and solutions for sensor-based incremental nonlinear control of hydraulically actuated parallel robots

Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion has shown increases in performance and robustness to model mismatches and uncertainties in hydraulic control as compared to other model-based controllers. This work will expand on hydraulic Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion force control and discuss three of its challenges and accompanying solutions....

Design of a 4-DoF hydraulic prosthetic arm for people with a shoulder amputation

People with a shoulder amputation are very much dependent on active total arm prostheses to provide in their self-care and to perform basic daily activities. Research on the development of active upper limb prosthetics has been growing over the past couple of years. The state-of-the-art total prosthetic arms that have been developed are very...

Design of a hydraulic transmission system with series elastic element for a knee joint gait training application

The restoration of the walking function of paraplegic patients requires long and extensive training. Physicians themselves are not able to provide this training due to the physical labour required. Robots and soft exoskeletons are in development to assist the physicians in this task, however, they are either bulky and restrictive or lack a...

Hybrid Force-Position Control of the Motion Compensated Gangway

Motion compensation for personnel transfer has greatly reduced costs and increased accessibility for offshore assets operation and maintenance. Solutions exist using hexapods or gangways that make a stiff connection by clamping to a customized offshore structure. State of the art gangways allow for a stepless workflow and have a rubber tip which...