The design of the passive arm module – and why it now works as expected

Robo-Mate's passive arm module does not need any power supply, is lightweight and provides a constant supporting force that can be easily varied. In a recently published paper, Ruprecht Altenburger, Daniel Scherly and Konrad Stadler (all from ZHAW) describe the requirements, design and geometry of the module, including a tiny little detail that makes a big difference.

The authors also describe how detailed experiments revealed a difference between the calculated and measured forces – and how they found the explanation for the difference: a geometrical effect which comes from the attachment of the spring to the construction and incorrect numbers in the spring datasheet.

Read the full article (open access) on SpringerOpen.