Society of Robots - Robot Forum
Mechanics and Construction => Mechanics and Construction => Topic started by: Cerin on August 12, 2012, 09:34:45 PM
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Has anyone ever tried or heard of using voice-coils to actuate a legged robot?
After reading about some research at MIT (http://robotic.media.mit.edu/projects/hardware/actuators/overview/overview.html (http://robotic.media.mit.edu/projects/hardware/actuators/overview/overview.html)) and about the overall benefits of voice coils, I'm considering making a very simple walker using voice coils for actuation.
Unfortunately, all commercial voice coils I've found online are both physically massive and insanely expensive, with the "smaller" ones running in the hundreds of dollars, so I'd have to make my own. It seems tedious, but doable, and I've seen a few examples online of people who have already built their own using off shelf motor controllers to drive them.
Suggestions or comments? Does this seem interesting or am I wasting my time?
Btw, I'm new here. What's with the excessive captcha's all over the site? There was some weird flag recognition captcha to register, which wasn't so bad, but now I'm seeing both a text recognition image captcha as well as a 6 question text captcha on every form I submit on the site. Not even companies that get a lot of spammers, like Google, bother with such overkill. It's just punishing your users.
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Hi,
Unfortunately, all commercial voice coils I've found online are both physically massive and insanely expensive, with the "smaller" ones running in the hundreds of dollars, so I'd have to make my own. It seems tedious, but doable, and I've seen a few examples online of people who have already built their own using off shelf motor controllers to drive them.
Suggestions or comments? Does this seem interesting or am I wasting my time?
If you're learning something and having fun at the same time, I don't see how it could be wasted time :)
You could rip open a dead hard drive, they've got a nice voice coil actuator for the head positioning and even if you can't find a way to use them directly, you'll still beable to study a working design (and rip the magnets for a DIY version).
Btw, I'm new here. What's with the excessive captcha's all over the site? There was some weird flag recognition captcha to register, which wasn't so bad, but now I'm seeing both a text recognition image captcha as well as a 6 question text captcha on every form I submit on the site. Not even companies that get a lot of spammers, like Google, bother with such overkill. It's just punishing your users.
I'm not sure if you'll see this anymore, or if it's the first few times you post, but then it goes away and it keeps the place reasonably spam free (and filters off the not-so-dedicated ;))