• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.19 no.12
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• pp.47-53
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• 2018

Various types of robotic arms are being used for industrial purposes, particularly with the small production of multi-products, and the importance of the gripper, which can be used in industrial fields, is increasing. This study evaluated a variable stiffness mechanism gripper that can change the stiffness using the nonlinearity of a flexible material. A prototype of the gripper was fabricated and examined to confirm the change in stiffness. The previous gripper was unable to grip objects in some situations with three variable stiffness mechanism. In addition, these mechanisms were not balanced and rarely rotated when the object was gripped. Therefore, a new type of gripper was needed to solve this problem. Inspired by the movements of the human palm and Venus Flytrap, a new type of a variable stiffness soft robot hand was designed. The possibility of grasping could be increased by interlocking the palm folding mechanism by pulling the tendon attached to the variable stiffness mechanism. The soft robotic hand was used to grasp objects of various shapes and weights more stably than the previous variable stiffness mechanism gripper. This new variable stiffness soft robot hand can be used selectively depending on the application and environment to be used.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2011.06a
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• pp.1373-1374
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• 2011

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.32 no.12
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• pp.1049-1054
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• 2015

Nowadays, there are many researches involving structural actuators, which have adjustable stiffness; they are also called variable stiffness actuators (VSA). The VSAs can adjust the characteristics of actuators for various functions and human-machine safety. This paper describes the design and analysis of two types of VSAs. To adjust stiffness, the actuators are controlled by a principle of lever ratio mechanism, by changing a pivot position or a spring position in the structure with springs. To make the principle workable, the designs are simplified by using a ball screw system with a motor. Each structure shows different static properties with variable rates of stiffness. We have also shown the experimental verification of the dynamic performance of the two types of VSAs. This research can be applied to various industrial fields, where humans work in conjunction with robots.

• Journal of the Korean Wood Science and Technology
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.35-43
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• 1989

Nailed joints, which are commonly used in Wooden structures, transmit loads from one member to another and induce partial composite actions between members. Long-term loads induce creep slip in nailed joints and affect load sharing and partial composite action, which may reduce joint stiffness. Two theoretical viscous-viscoelastic models were developed for nailed joints to predict creep behavior under long-term variable loads. Those models were also used to predict stiffness changes under long-term variable loads. The stiffness of nailed joint is defined as a Secant modulus which is called the joint modulus or slip modulus. Input data for the models are the results of constant load tests under three different load levels. To verify the models, nailed joints were also tested under two long-term variable load functions. The predictions of the models were very close to the experimental data. Therefore, the theoretical viscous-viscoelastic models and procedures developed in this study can be applied to predict creep slip and the changes in joint moduli of nailed joints under long-term variable loads.

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
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• 2003.03a
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• pp.449-456
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• 2003

Hybrid semi-active control system is applied to improve the seismic peformance of the building structure against earthquake excitation and the LQR-based semi-active control algorithm is developed to tune the integrated stiffness/damping characteristics of the hybrid system complementarily. Numerical simulation for a 8-story shear building has been carried out to verify the applicability and effectiveness of the proposed method. Analysis results showed that the hybrid system can be a compromising solution to the seismic response control problem, compared with conventional variable stiffness or variable damping systems. Comparison results proved that the proposed algorithm can perform refined tuning of the stiffness and damping coefficients of the hybrid semi-active control system better than sliding mode control algorithm.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.711-730
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• 2014

In this paper the system dynamic influences in actuators with variable stiffness as contemporary used in robotics for safety and efficiency reasons are investigated. Therefore, different configurations of serial and parallel elasticities are modeled by dynamic equations and linearized transfer functions. The latter ones are used to identify the characteristic behavior of the different systems and to study the effect of the different elasticities. As such actuation concepts are often used to reach energy-efficient operation, a power consumption analysis of the configurations is performed. From the comparison of this with the system dynamics, strategies to select and control stiffness are derived. Those are based on matching the natural frequencies or antiresonance modes of the actuation system to the frequency of the trajectory. Results show that exclusive serial and parallel elasticity can minimize power consumption when tuning the system to the natural frequencies. Antiresonance modes are an additional possibility for stiffness control in the series elastic setup. Configurations combining both types of elasticities do not provide further advantages regarding power reduction but an input parallel elasticity might enable for more versatile stiffness selection. Yet, design and control effort increase in such solutions. Topologies incorporating output parallel elasticity showed not to be beneficial in the chosen example but might do so in specific applications.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.128-134
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• 2009

This paper aims to design a variable-stiffness type economical safety joint for service robots. The safety joint was designed to have a passive shock absorbing mechanism for protecting human from a catastrophic collision under service condition of robots. A simple mechanism composed of two action disks for switching the load transfer, a spring and a screw for pre-load was proposed. In order to evaluate the performance of the safety joint a testing platform which can carry out the static and impact tests was also designed and fabricated. From the test results, the designed safety joint was proved to have a variable load-carrying capacity and about 42% impact absorption capacity with simple manipulation of the control screw.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.449-450
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• 2007

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.131-138
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• 2019

In this study, we developed an FSEA(Force-sensing Series Elastic Actuator) composed of a spring and an actuator has been developed to compensate for external disturbance forced. The FSEA has a simple structure in which the spring and the actuator are connected in series, and the external force can be easily measured through the displacement of the spring. And the characteristic of the spring absorbs the shock to the small disturbance and increases the sense of stability. It is designed and constructed to control the stiffness of such springs more flexibly according to the situation. The conventional FSEA uses a fixed stiffness spring and the actuator is not compensated properly when it receives large or small external force. Through this experiment, it is confirmed that FSEA compensates the external force through the proposed algorithm that the variable stiffness compensates well for large and small external forces.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.47 no.3
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• pp.345-359
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• 2013

For the purpose of investigating the free vibration response of the spatial curved beams, the governing equations are derived in matrix formats, considering the variable curvature and torsion. The theory includes all the effects of rotary inertia, shear and axial deformations. Frobenius' scheme and the dynamic stiffness method are then applied to solve these equations. A computer program is coded in Mathematica according to the proposed method. As a special case, the dynamic stiffness and further the natural frequencies of a cylindrical helical spring under fixed-fixed boundary condition are carried out. Comparison of the present results with the FEM results using body elements in I-DEAS shows good accuracy in computation and validity of the model. Further, the present model is used for reciprocal spiral rods with different boundary conditions, and the comparison with FEM results shows that only a limited number of terms in the resultant provide a relatively accurate solution.