Mohammad Hasan H.

Kani1
Advanced Control Systems Laboratory and
Cognitive Robotics Laboratory,
Control and Intelligent Processing
Center of Excellence,
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
College of Engineering,
University of Tehran,
Office No. 110,
North Kargar Street,
Tehran 1439957131, Iran
e-mail: h.kani@ut.ac.ir

Hamed Ali Yaghini Bonabi

Cognitive Robotics Laboratory,
Control and Intelligent Processing
Center of Excellence,
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
College of Engineering,
Design and Implementation
University of Tehran,
Office No. 514,
North Kargar Street,
of a Distributed Variable
Tehran 1439957131, Iran
e-mail: h.yaghini@ut.ac.ir
Impedance Actuator Using
Hamed Jalaly Bidgoly
Cognitive Robotics Laboratory,
Parallel Linear Springs
Control and Intelligent Processing
This paper introduces a distributed variable impedance actuator that provides independ-
Center of Excellence,
ent control of the actuators angular position and its impedance. The idea for the actua-
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
tor was inspired by the morphological structure of muscles and tendons. The system to be
College of Engineering,
presented can be used as both a variable impedance actuator as well as a passive piece-
University of Tehran,
wise linear spring. Moreover, the actuator has an adequate number of degrees-of-
Office No. 402,
freedom to approximate any nonlinear spring characteristics because of its distributed
North Kargar Street,
nature. Using distributed torque production subsystems with small and low power motors
Tehran 1439957131, Iran
makes it possible to use this actuator in many applications such as prosthesis, artificial
e-mail: jalaly.hamed@ut.ac.ir
limbs, and wearable robots. The stability of the system discussed and the conditions that
ensure the system stability are presented. Finally, a proof-of-concept actuator design is
Mohammad Javad Yazdanpanah presented, as well as experimental results which confirm that the proposed distributed
Advanced Control Systems Laboratory and variable impedance actuator can be implemented in practical applications.
Cognitive Robotics Laboratory, [DOI: 10.1115/1.4032202]
Control and Intelligent Processing
Center of Excellence, Keywords: variable impedance, distributed actuator, bio-inspired design, hybrid and
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, switching system, parallel springs
College of Engineering,
University of Tehran,
Office No. 730,
North Kargar Street,
Tehran 1439957131, Iran
e-mail: yazdan@ut.ac.ir

Majid Nili Ahmadabadi

Cognitive Robotics Laboratory,
Control and Intelligent Processing
Center of Excellence,
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
College of Engineering,
University of Tehran,
Office No. 734,
North Kargar Street,
Tehran 1439957131, Iran
e-mail: mnili@ut.ac.ir

1
Corresponding author.
Manuscript received April 27, 2015; final manuscript received November 25,
2015; published online January 6, 2016. Assoc. Editor: Robert J. Wood.

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 1 Introduction
There has been increasing interest in adopting the characteris-
tics of high-performance human muscles in the development of
new forms of actuation. Several actuators have been designed to
utilize some characteristics and advantages of muscles. However,
none of them have all the advantages of a natural muscle. In this
paper, we propose a novel actuator that combines more advan-
tages of natural muscle in a single actuator.
Natural muscles have a very high torque-to-weight ratio. They
also enable the human arms and legs to interact safely with their
environment. Natural muscles also have energy storage character-
istics and act passively in some phases of running, walking, or
throwing an object.
One of the main features of natural muscles is adaptable com-
pliance. Many compliant actuators have been proposed in previ-
ous literature (see Ref. [1] for a survey). Among them, the main
categories of compliant actuators are those that utilize springs in
their structure. In 1995, Pratt et al. introduced the series elastic
actuator (SEA) [2,3]. The idea of SEAs involves placing a spring
between the motor and the link. In this configuration, the deflec-
tion of spring can be used for measuring joint torque. Therefore,
instead of using noisy and expensive torque sensors, position sen-
sors are used for torque control. SEA actuation also presents sev-
eral other advantages, such as safety, high-performance torque
control, and their ability to store and release energy in their pas-
sive element. Because of these features, they are popular in appli-
cations that involve humanrobot interaction such as
exoskeletons, rehabilitation, and surgical robots [46]. They are
also used in humanoid and quadruped robots [712], artificial
limbs, and prostheses [13].
In the above mentioned applications, one of the main aspects of
the control strategy is stiffness variation. The compliant actuators
can be divided into two categories from the stiffness control point
of view. In the first group, the stiffness is changed virtually by
impedance control methods [14]. In this way, just one spring and
one motor are sufficient for stiffness control. Therefore, these
SEAs also have other several advantages such as simplicity, light-
ness, and small form factor. The main disadvantage of this group
is that bandwidth of the system in achieving a desired stiffness is
limited [15]. Therefore, in some high-frequency events, such as an
impact, actuator stiffness is saturated by the passive stiffness of
the physical spring in actuator structure, as opposed to the desired
one [16]. Moreover, for some controllers, the desired stiffness
cannot be chosen larger than physical spring stiffness because of
stability concerns [15]. Another disadvantage of SEAs is that
energy consumption increases for lower stiffness [1].
In the second group, actuator stiffness is changed physically.
These actuators use more than a motor and spring toward simulta-
neous position and compliance control, making them heavier and
more complex [1720].
Considering the aforementioned examples, it is clear that an ac-
tuator which possesses all the advantages of natural muscles does
not yet exist. The main difference between the muscles and cur-
rent actuators is their stiffness and torque control structure. Stiff-
ness and torque in the muscles are changed by engaging and
disengaging small torque production units, called fibers. One men-
tionable example which uses this idea for torque production is the
compliant actuator, proposed by Mathijssen et al. [21]. Thus,
design uses a mutilated gear structure for engaging springs in dif-
ferent angles, making the actuator very energy efficient. In their
subsequent work, they have used a hierarchical structure with dis-
crete activation for designing an efficient and compact compliant
actuator [22].
In this work, we have tried to utilize several advantages of com-
pliant actuators in a single actuator. We propose a distributed
compliant actuator inspired by an antagonistic structure of
muscles using small torque production units. Instead of using a
bulky motor and a compliant element, this actuator uses several
subsystems of small motors and springs which act together to
021024-2 / Vol. 8, APRIL 2016
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produce a required torque. In the proposed actuator, stiffness is
changed by engaging and disengaging several antagonistic pairs
of springs. Since stiffness is changed physically, there is no band-
width limitation on rendered stiffness. Although this method of
changing stiffness restricts us to discrete values of compliance,
the stiffness can be switched between several values, making it
sufficient for most of robotic applications. For example, in leg
locomotion, it is sufficient to have a compliant joint during the
landing phase, for shock absorbance, and a stiff joint during the
pushing phase [23]. On the other hand, for applications which
require a wide range of stiffness, the actuator can be used as a tor-
que production unit and can be controlled like an SEA. In this
case, the system has a higher bandwidth compared to a simple
SEA [16]. In addition, the novel actuator can be used to form a
piecewise linear spring which approximates a desired nonlinear
spring with monotonic increasing profile. This is achievable due
to the actuators many degrees-of-freedom and can be performed
by locking motors in appropriate positions. Moreover, increasing
number of motors and springs leads to better approximation of
nonlinear stiffness characteristics. Therefore, the actuator can be
used as a passive compliant element for changing the natural
dynamics of the robot. For example, when dealing with nonlinear
spring applications, this actuator can be applied to disturbance
rejection in leg locomotion [24,25]. Another prominent advantage
of the novel compliant actuator is the utilization of small motors
over a single bulky motor. As a result, actuator can be designed in
shapes that are appropriate for applications such as prostheses or
humanoid robots. In Sec. 3, we will address specific stability con-
cerns common to compliant actuation methods. These concerns
become more important when several subsystems are working to-
gether. In this paper, we provide a stability analysis by utilizing
switching systems stability theories.
2 Design
In this section, the distributed variable impedance actuator is
introduced. The actuator was inspired from the morphological
structure of muscles and tendons [26,27], namely, the mechanism
for exerting torque to skeletal joints. Muscles produce force using
structural units called muscle fibers. Each fiber operates in parallel
with neighboring fibers [27]. The role of these fibers in a muscle
contraction, as well as their parallelism, has motivated the idea of
investigating distributed force production in our actuator.
Figure 1 shows the structure of the actuator. It includes two
series of parallel springs located at the right and left sides of a
joint. Similar to the role of tendons, the joint is connected to each
spring by a thread. As a result, each spring can only exert force to
the joint in the pulling direction. The joint section, to which all of
the springs are connected, is assumed to be fully circular so that
its dynamics can be described by a set of linear differential equa-
tions. As shown in Fig. 1, the joints angular position is depicted
by h, and r shows the radius of the joints disk. The torque applied
to the joint by the spring and damper sets is illustrated by s, and
Th shows the effect of any known external torques. Commonly,
this exerted external torque is a function of joint angle. Moreover,
kil and kir represent the constants of the springs located at the left
l=r
and right side, respectively. A parallel damping element, bi , is
considered in the description of each spring. By adding this
energy dissipating element, we are able to model a real spring as
l=r
simply as possible. In addition, qi represents the end side posi-
tion of each spring and damper couple. The dynamical equation of
the joint is as follows:
JJ h BJ h_  s  Th 0 (1)
where JJ and BJ are the joints moment of inertia and damping
coefficient, respectively.
s can be calculated in terms of the forces Fl1 ; Fl2 ; :::; Flnl and
Fr1 ; Fr2 ; :::; Frnr applied to the joint disk. Because of the circular
Transactions of the ASME
 We also define two parameters of Ktot and Btot as the joint im-
pedance and its corresponding damping constant added by the par-
allel springs to the joint
X
Ktot i
r 2 kil dli kir dri
X (6)
2 l l r r
Btot i
r b i di b i d i

The system can now be viewed as a single input single output

(SISO) system. This assumption helps us simplify the investiga-
tion of the systems intrinsic characteristics. The definition of this
single input, denoted the systems major input, is
! !
1 Xnl   Xnr
 r r 
l l l l l r r r
u r ki qi bi q_ i di  ki qi bi q_ i di T h
Ktot i1 i1
(7)
l=r
Equation (7) shows a constraint between the values of qi and
u that must be satisfied when the joint is considered as an SISO
l=r
system. The values of qi must be determined such that after
compensation of Th, they produce the major input. Using the
definition of Ktot and Btot , and by replacing Eqs. (5) and (7) in
Fig. 1 A scheme of the distributed variable impedance Eq. (1), the dynamical equation of the joint can be written as
actuator
JJ h BJ Btot h_ Ktot h uKtot v (8)
form of the joint disk, there exists a linear relation between
Fl1 ; Fl2 ; :::; Flnl and Fr1 ; Fr2 ; :::; Frnr and the resulting torque, s, as This equation shows that the definition of Ktot is matched to the
! relation of Ktot @v=@h. Moreover, the systems transfer function
X nl Xnr
Gs (hs Gsus) takes the form
l l r r
sr Fi di  Fi di (2)
i1 i1
Ktot
Gs (9)
where the function
l=r
dispecifies whether
l=r
Fi
is active or not. If JJ s2 BJ Btot s Ktot
l=r l=r l=r
di 1 for a couple denoted ki ; bi , we name this set active. This is a second-order transfer function with a unitary DC gain.
l=r
Similarly, if a set is inactive, then di 0. A pushing force is not Because of the positive coefficients of the denominator, the sys-
possible because thread connections are used. The deflection is tem is stable. This system benefits from its intrinsic closed-loop
defined as qli  hr and qri hr for the spring and damper sets in controller because the active springs and dampers connected to
the left and right sides of the joint, respectively. Although the the joint actually act as a proportional-derivative (PD) controller.
exerted force of each spring and damping set should be positive, it In other words, the joint, alone, has a transfer function of the form
is also important that each spring deflection remains positive. GJ s JJ s2 BJ s1 . By adding a PD controller with a propor-
That is because of the fact that if a real spring is not active, its tional gain of Ktot and derivative gain of Btot , the closed-loop
energy dissipating element cannot produce any force. Conse- transfer function has a characteristic equation that is completely
l=r
quently, the function di is defined as matched to the denominator of Gs. Moreover, adding springs to
the actuators structure reduces the gain which results from the
( motor, and consequently, allows us to increase the controllers
l 1 if Fli > 0 & qli  hr > 0
di t gains [28].
0 if Fli  0 or qli  hr  0 As we mentioned before, our variable impedance actuator tends
( (3) to provide a degree-of-freedom to change the joint impedance in-
r
1 if Fri > 0 & qri hr > 0 dependent of its angular position. This is achieved by changing
di t
0 if Fri  0 or qri hr  0 each active set of spring and damper to inactive or vice versa. In
other words, the discrete values of Ktot and Btot can be changed in
Moreover, without loss of generality, the free length of each time. In Sec. 3, system stability issues will be addressed, as well
spring is assumed to be zero. According to Fig. 1, the force exerted as the situations during which the systems stability is guaranteed.
by each springdamper couple on the joint can be written as
8
< Fl kl ql  hr bl q_ l  hrd
_ l 3 Stability Concerns
i i i i i i
(4) Impedance variations during the movement of the actuator have
: Fr kr qr hr br q_ r hrd
_ r
i i i i i i the potential to make the system unstable. According to Eq. (9), it
is obvious that by changing the impedance of the actuator, the
Consequently, the joints applied torque is calculated in terms transfer function changes and a switching occurs between two dif-
l=r
of qi and h ferent second-order systems.
_ Aq xt ; q 2 Q is supposed as a family of second-
RAq : xt
X
nl
 l l    X
nr
 r r  order linear time invariant (LTI) systems and r : 0; 1 ! Q is
sr _ dl 
ki qi  hr bli q_ li  hr ki qi hr
i defined as the piecewise constant switching signal. If RA1 and
i1 i1 RA2 describe two second-order LTI systems, Theorem 3.1
!
describes necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a
_
bri q_ ri hrdr
(5) common quadratic Lyapunov function (CQLF) for the pairs of
i
RA1 and RA2 under arbitrary switching.

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 THEOREM 3.1. Let A1 ; A2 2 R2 be Hurwitz [29,30]. Then, a nec-
essary and sufficient condition for RA1 and RA2 to have a CQLF
is that the matrix products A1 A2 and A1 A21 have no negative
eigenvalues.
For our actuator, the state space matrix of Gs has the form as
2 3
0 1
6 7
AKtot ; Btot 4 Ktot BJ Btot 5 (10)
 
JJ JJ
In order to show the potential of instability by arbitrary switch-
ing, it is enough to consider two state matrices of A1 K1 ; B1 and
A2 K2 ; B2 corresponding to the actuator with two different impe-
dances. It can be seen that the matrix product of A1 A2 does not
have positive eigenvalues for all positive values of Ktot and Btot .
So, there exist no CQLF for each of two subsystems. In Ref. [31],
it has been declared that in some cases, nonexistence of CQLF for
second-order LTI systems implies that an unstable switching
sequence exists in order to lead the system to instability. Conse-
quently, we are forced to choose constrained switching such that
the switched system remains stable. It is well known that if the
switching is sufficiently slow and all the subsystems are also sta-
ble, we can expect a stable hybrid system [32]. Therefore, the
number of switches in any given finite time interval is assumed to
be limited. It is notable that if Q is selected as a finite set, the com-
pactness of the switching system is automatically guaranteed.
Moreover, in linear systems, under a large enough switching time,
the switching system is asymptotically stable if all of the subsys-
tems RAq ; q 2 Q have asymptotic stability. In other words,
because of having compactness and stability of each subsystem,
there exist two positive constants l; k0 such that [32,33]
kUq t; tp k  lek0 ttp t > tp  0; q 2 Q
where Uq t; tp is state transition matrix of RAq ; q 2 Q. The con-
stant k0 is also defined as the common stability margin for all of
the subsystems RAq ; q 2 Q, and tp defines the initial time
instance. Although asymptotic stability is guaranteed if
lek0 sD < 1, this assumption is too conservative and restrictive
[32]. sD t  tp is defined as the system dwell time. Namely, this
assumption imposes a constraint that when a switching occurs,
there must not exist any switching for the next sD units of time.
2 3
BJ Btot tsinat
BJ Btot tt 6 cosat 
Ur t; 0 e 2JJ 6
4
2Ktot tsinat
where a and D are defined as 0:5JJ 1 D and
q l lt 2sin2 atc D2 2 sin2 atc sin2 atc D2
4JJ Ktot  BJ Btot 2 , respectively. It is supposed that the
expression 4JJ Ktot  BJ Btot 2 is always positive in our system.
This assumption is imposed by the available and prevalent ranges
for spring and damper coefficients and also by the practical
ranges of the joints moment of inertia and its damping constant.
By considering the fact that the Euclidean norm of the state transi-
tion matrix can be depicted by the square of its greatest singular
value and using some mathematical operations, it can be
shown that
BJ Btot tt
kUr t; 0k  le 2JJ
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Therefore, it is impossible to make decision when a failure occurs
in this time interval, and the concept of dwell time is not suitable
in practical applications. Consequently, the concept of an average
dwell time is used in order to avoid the disadvantages of dwell
time [32,34]. Using this concept, it is possible to switch fast and
then more slowly when compensation is needed. Now, if there
occur k switches such as ft1 ; t2 ; :::; tk g in the time interval tp ; t,
the system response in the time instance t is as follows [33]:
xt Urtk t; tk Urtk1 tk ; tk1 :::Urt1 t2 ; t1 Urtp t1 ; tp xtp
(12)
where Urtkj tkj1 ; tkj defines the state transition matrix for
the subsystem specified by the function r in the time instance tkj .
Using Eqs. (11) and (12), it can be concluded
kUrtk t; tk Urtk1 tk ; tk1 :::Urt1 t2 ; t1 Urtp t1 ; tp k
 lk1 ek0 ttp (13)
According to Eq. (13), the switching sequence must satisfy the
condition of
lk1 ek0 ttp  cekttp (14)
where the parameter k ; k 2 0; k0 is defined as the stability mar-
gin and c is a positive constant. As previously mentioned, in the
context of LTI systems, asymptotic stability results in exponential
stability. The parameter k exactly specifies the number of permis-
sible switches in the time interval tp ; t that ensures the exponen-
tial stability under the stability margin k and the coefficient c [33].
It should be noticed that in this relation, the pairs of l and k0 are
constrained by the nature of subsystems and we can only choose k
(11) and c such that
logc k0  k
k 1 t  tp (15)
log l log l
Using the concept of average dwell time and the number of
allowed switches in each time interval according to Eq. (15), we
must propose an instruction for switching in our variable imped-
ance actuator. For our systems state matrix shown in Eq. (10), the
state transition matrix is declared as follows:
2JJ sinat
 7
D D 7 (16)
BJ Btot tsinat 5
cosat
D D
 q 
1   1=2
D
(18)
where c is defined as JJ  Ktot 2 BJ Btot 2 . On the other
hand, although the parameters JJ and BJ are constant, the value of
Btot t and Ktot t is varying in time when the joint impedance
changes. So, the value of the common stability margin, k0 , and l
depend on the impedance of the joint. Consequently, to find a
function envelope for the Euclidean norm of all the state transition
matrices, kUr t; 0k, it is sufficient to choose the maximum and
minimum value of the parameters l and k0 , respectively. The
maximum value of l corresponds to the time that sinat 1. It is
noticeable that the maximum value of l and the minimum value
(17) of k0 can occur for two different joint impedance values.
Transactions of the ASME
 BJ minBtot tt
kUr t; 0k  lmax e 2JJ
lmax ek0min t
Therefore, the values of l and k0 in Eq. (15) are chosen as lmax
and 0:5JJ 1 BJ minBtot t, respectively. According to Eq.
(15), the exact number of allowed switches in each time interval
is calculated by determination of k and c. Although by choosing
greater values of c and smaller values of k, the number of permis-
sible switches in each time interval increases; the convergence
rate of the system response decreases.
It may seem that for some applications, this maximum number
of achievable switches generated by Eq. (15) is not enough. By
observing Eq. (18) and the definition of c, we can see that the
value of lmax may be noticeably large. Therefore, it causes a
decrease in the number of permissible switches in each time inter-
val. To solve this problem, we assume one more limitation in the
switching time between any two subsystems. Decreasing the value
of lmax can be considered as an accessible way for increasing the
number of allowable switches in each specified time interval.
However, it should be noticed that for any increase in the number
of allowed switches, it is not admissible to change the systems
structural parameters. According to Eq. (18), if the value of
sin2 at is restricted to a small value such as d < 1, the amplitude
of the function envelope can be calculated as
 !
 1=2
q As mentioned in Ref. [36], the potential of instability in switch-
1
lmax max 2dc D2 2 dc dc D2
Btot ;Ktot D
The constraint of sin2 at < d < 1 implies a limitation on the
switching time between subsystems. This constraint is related to
the concept of state dependent switching [32]. Using some mathe-
matical operations, k switching times such as ft1 ; t2 ; :::; tk g in the
time interval tp ; t must satisfy the following relation:
 p   p 
we control the joint angular position by consideration of the joint
1 1
ti 2 sin1 d pj ; sin1 d pj \ tp ; t;
a a
j2Z (21)
4 Control Mechanism
The proposed variable impedance actuation, as declared briefly
in Sec. 1, not only makes the user enable to independently control
the actuators position and stiffness but also has a potential to
serve passively as a piecewise linear spring. Consequently, the
structure of this actuator provides a possibility to be used as both
passive and active joint.
4.1 Passive Piecewise Linear Spring. As the simplest appli-
cation, the actuator easily makes us enable to approximate each
nonlinear monotonic increasing torquedisplacement characteris-
tic with a passive piecewise linear spring (Fig. 2). The advantage
of our mechanism over other designs is its ability to create many
l=r
different spring characteristics via determination of qi and lock-
ing each motor at these specified set points. As a result, any
change in the set point of each motor results in a new
torquedisplacement characteristic. In addition, this structure can
be easily implemented only by using some linear springs and DC
motors. Using DC motors with worm gearboxes or designing a
mechanical locking mechanism [35], we can fix any springs end
side position without consuming energy. It should be noticed that
there is a tradeoff between having a simple structure that can
only approximate a nonlinear spring characteristic with a piece-
wise linear one and utilizing a mechanical complicated nonlinear
spring [17].
l=r
When the springs end sides, qi , are locked in the specified set
points, changing h makes the deflection of some springs positive
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(19)
Fig. 2 Torquedisplacement characteristic of the passive
piecewise linear spring
and some others negative. However, deflection of each spring is
supposed to be negative whenever its corresponding connected
thread becomes loose. Therefore, by variation of h, the springs
change from active to inactive or vice versa, and according to
Eq. (6), the impedance or stiffness characteristic of the joint varies
(Fig. 2).
(20) ing systems has the origin in the increase of the systems energy
while switching occurs. Unlike the active variable impedance ac-
tuator, using the proposed mechanism as a passive piecewise lin-
ear spring does not raise concern about instability, because in the
passive mode, there is no external energy source that causes any
increase in the systems energy.
4.2 Active Variable Impedance Actuator. In this section,
desired impedance. This means that there exist two set points of h
and the joints impedance. In the control mechanism (Fig. 3(a),
the input of the joint impedance is completely independent from
the joint angle. It will be seen that the impedance is determined by
specifying of the joints left and right side impedances. On the
other hand, there exists an optimization block in order to assign
l=r l=r
the qi set points. Mi blocks, illustrated in Fig. 3(b) in detail,
indicate the closed-loop control system of DC motors used to con-
l=r
trol the springs end sides. Moreover, the math operator Rgqi
l=r
merges the effects of qi and creates the major input, u, with
respect to Eq. (7).
Before going further, the relation between the joints imped-
ance and the active springs is shortly explained. According to
Eq. (6), Ktot is calculated by an aggregation between the constants
of active springs in both sides of the joint. ForP 2simplicity, we con-
l r l l l r
sider
P 2 r r Ktot K tot K tot , where K tot r k i di and Ktot
r ki di are the left and right side impedance, respectively. This
impedance allocation creates one degree-of-freedom that will be
investigated more in Sec. 5. Two simple lookup tables are used in
l=r
order to determine the value of function di in each time instance.
On the other hand, Eq. (9) declares that for reaching any desired
output, it is enough to determine the major input ut. According
l=r
to Eq. (7), there are many degrees-of-freedom in finding qi in
l=r
order to create ut. The values of qi can be specified by apply-
ing an optimization method. Although it seems that Fig. 3(a)
depicts a closed-loop control law (except for the intrinsic PD con-
troller provided by the spring and damper sets), h is only used in
the optimization block to assign the portion of each spring and
damper set in providing the major input, ut. In other words, h is
not used to construct any error signals, and therefore, determina-
tion of ut is an open-loop mechanism.
The following cost function is defined with respect to the work
done by all of the pairs of active springdamper, located in both
sides of the joint:
APRIL 2016, Vol. 8 / 021024-5
 Fig. 3 (a) Control block diagram of the distributed variable impedance actuator and (b)
closed-loop control system of DC motors

nl
X   Xnr _ Dt1 at  at  Dt is applied to the terms of q_ i and
of at
r=l
W Fli dli :d qli  hr Fri dri :dqri hr (22) _h r=l in Eq. (23). Since all the parameters at the time instance t  Dt
i1 i1 i
are known, the final representation of the cost function is
l=r
where the function di specifies the active pairs. In each time   
l=r
instance, the value of inputs, qi , should be calculated. As a X nl
1 l 2bli  l 2 2bl  
Ct ki qi t  htr  i qli t  htr
result, their values are specified in order to minimize the partial i1
2 Dt Dt
work, DW, at each time instance. By replacing Eq. (4) in Eq. (22)  
and also using dat atdt,
_ DW is calculated as  qli t  Dt  ht  Dtr dli
 X nr   
Xnl
1 l l 2 1  1 r 2bri  r 2 2br  
DW t ki qi t  htr  kil qli t  Dt ki qi t htr  i qri t htr
2 2 i1
2 Dt Dt
i1
 2   
_  qri t  Dt ht  Dtr dri (24)
 ht  Dtr2 bli q_ li  hr Dt dli
Moreover, we assume that ht is also known. This assumption is
X nr 
1 r r 2 1  logical, because it is common to use a position sensor in any imple-
ki qi t htr  kir qri t  Dt mented practical joint. As Eq. (24) declares, the cost function has a
i1
2 2 l=r
   quadratic form and the only unknown parameters are qi . On the
2 2
other hand, the following constraints must be met simultaneously:
ht  Dtr bri q_ ri hr _ Dt dri (23)
!
Amp X nl 
l l l l
 l X nr
 r r r r
 r
ut r ki qi tbi q_ i t di  ki qi tbi q_ i t di
Although by minimization of DW we do not guarantee to mini- Ktot i1 i1
mize the entire work, it results in an acceptable suboptimal solu-
tion. To have a more simple expression for DW, the approximation T ht (25)

Table 1 Parameters of the distributed variable impedance actuator

Parameter Value Description Parameter Value Description

2
JJ 0.01 kg m Joint moment of inertia P 2.779 Proportional gain of proportional-integral-derivative
(PID) controllers
BJ 0.05 N  m s=rad Joint damping constant I 0.778 Integral gain of PID controllers
JM 0.003 kg m2 DC motor moment of inertia D 0.112 Derivative gain of PID controllers
BM 0.001 N  m s=rad DC motor damping constant N 209.16 Filter coefficient of PID controllers
l=r
r 0.015 (m) Radius of the joint disk Dxin 5 cm Deflection limit when di 1
l=r
rM 0.015 (m) Radius of pulleys Dxout 5 cm Deflection limit when di 0
l=r
Fmax 200 (N) Pair of spring and damper force limit

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 Fig. 4 Set-point tracking of the actuator: (a) the joint angular position and (b) the joint impedance value

(
qli  hr > Dxin ; dli 1
(26)
qri hr > Dxin ; dri 1
(
qli  hr Dxout ; dli 0
(27)
qri hr Dxout ; dri 0
(
kil qli  hr  Flmax; ; dli 1
(28)
kir qri hr  Frmax ; dri 1
(
_ > 0 ; dl 1
kil qli  hr bli q_ li  hr i (29)
r r r _r
ki qi hr bi q i hr _ > 0 ; dr 1
i

The first and the most important constraint, as shown in

l=r
Eq. (25), is the relation of the inputs, qi , and the major input, u,
as defined in Eq. (7). This constraint should be satisfied because h
is determined by u through the transfer function of Gs. The term
Amp is the amplitude of Gs at the input frequency which is
added to Eq. (25) in order to compensate the amplitude error
between u and h. Equation (26) imposes the condition that the
input value of each active spring is chosen in order to keep it con-
stantly active. The reason for using Dxin > 0, instead of zero, is to
prevent each active set of spring and damper from being inactive
due to disturbance or noise. There is a tradeoff between being
more conservative in choosing Dxin and having more energy effi-
ciency. On the other hand, inactive springs should also be kept
constantly inactive, so the constraint (27) should be satisfied dur-
ing optimization. Therefore, the term Dxout is chosen as a small
negative value in order to make each inactive spring follow the
joint trajectory with a small negative deflection. This improves
performance of impedance trajectory tracking because each inac-
tive spring can be active immediately. The other series of con-
straints declared in Eq. (28) are imposed to the system by physical
force limitations. Finally, Eq. (29) implies that the force applied
by each pair of spring and damper to the joint should be positive.
The reason for this is the use of thread connections which can
only be under tension. Fig. 5 Time variations of the left and right side springs deflec-
l=r
Using optimization, the inputs of qi are determined. These tions: (a) joints left side springs deflections and (b) deflections
inputs are the positions of springs and dampers end sides and can of the right side

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 Fig. 6 Power consumption of our proposed variable imped- Fig. 8 Joints angular position and its impedance diagrams
ance actuator in five different frequencies versus all of the pos- while a constant torque of 0.5 Nm for 0.3 s is exerted to the joint
sible joint impedance values as an external disturbance at the time instance t 5 2

be provided in different ways. One of the simplest and most appli-
cable methods is using DC motors and pulleys to convert rotary to
linear motion which is then used in our proposed actuator. A sim-
ple PID controller is also chosen to control the angular position of
each DC motor such a way that the end sides of springs and damp-
l=r
ers track their set points, qid (Fig. 3(b)).
5 Simulation Results
In this section, the variable impedance actuator is simulated.
We assume that four real springs are located in each side of the
joint and their spring constants are chosen as
f1  103 ; 2  103 ; 2  103 ; 5  103 gN=m. Using this set of
spring constants, we are able to have a range of spring constants
between 1  103 N=m and 10  103 N=m in each side of the
joint by combination of active springs. Consequently, according
to Sec. 4.2, the joint impedance, Ktot , has a discrete value in the
range of 2  103  r 2 N=m and 20  103  r 2 N=m. On the
other hand, corresponding to each spring, there exists an energy
dissipating element whose damping constant is chosen in propor-
tion to its related spring constant. So, in each side of the joint,
there is a set of four dampers with damping constants assumed as
f10; 20; 20; 50gN s=m. The phenomenon that the damping con-
stant varies in proportion to the variation of its corresponding
stiffness occurs in some artificial muscles such as pneumatic types
[37]. Other parameters of the variable impedance actuator are
illustrated in Table 1. Using a total of eight real springs for the
joint requires eight corresponding DC motors to control their
displacement. For the sake of simplicity and without loss of gener-
ality, these motors are assumed to be identical and also have the
same pulleys with equal diameters. Moreover, PID controllers are
considered to be the same and their transfer functions are in the
parallel form.
The most important operational index of the proposed actuator
is set-point tracking of the joint angle and its impedance, simulta-
neously. It is so important that we can change the impedance of
the joint independent of its angular position. Figure 4(a) shows
the joint position and its desired angular set-point signal. The joint
impedance and its corresponding desired value are displayed in
Fig. 4(b). These experiments were done in presence of an external
known torque of 0:1 sinh and the control mechanism compen-
sates it efficiently. These two figures obviously describe that the
proposed control mechanism is completely able to control both
the angular position and impedance in presence of a known exter-
nal torque. Figure 5 shows the deflections of all the spring sets.
Being more accurate, it can be seen that the deflection of each
inactive spring and damper set is kept in the range of Dout when
the joint tracks its set points.
In addition, the allowed switching time must be considered for
any changes in the joint impedance. According to Eq. (15) and the
values of system parameters (Table 1), and also assuming
k 0:5k0 ; c 2l, nine switches are admissible in order to
maintain the desired exponential stability in a time interval of
20 s. If an application requires a faster switching sequence,
Eq. (21) can be used to determine the switching times. It should
be noticed that each change in the impedance of the joint can be

Fig. 7 Power consumption of the joint versus the joints impedance values. For each impedance, the power consumption for
l r
all of the possible cases of choosing Ktot ; Ktot =r 2 is plotted with circles. The curve connects the minimum power consumption
l r
points and the value of Ktot ; Ktot =r 2 is also written for these minimum points.

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 Fig. 9 Mechanical structure of the designed distributed variable impedance actuator

taken into account as only one switch between subsystems if just
the control of each springs end side is tight enough.
Besides set-point tracking, the other important issue is the
energy consumption. Consequently, the power consumption of the
actuator is calculated for set-point tracking of 0:5p sin2pft in
five different frequencies. In addition, in each frequency, the sim-
ulation is done for all of the possible joint impedance values and
the result is illustrated in Fig. 6. The diagram shows that we
should expect more power consumption for higher joint fre-
quency. On the other hand, in each frequency, maximum energy
consumption occurs in a specific impedance and this impedance
increases with the operating frequency.
Moreover, as we declared in Sec. 4.2, the joint impedance is
calculated by summation of the joints left and right side
impedances. Thus, there exists a degree-of-freedom to choose the
values of the left and right side impedances in order to reach a
determined joint impedance value. Investigating this fact, we
measure the joint power consumption at the frequency of 2 Hz for
all the possible joint impedance values. Moreover, for each joint
l r
impedance, all of the possible combinations of Ktot and Ktot are
considered. Figure 7 shows that the least power consumption in
l r
each specified impedance is occurred when Ktot and Ktot gain pos-
sible nearest values to each other.
The proposed control mechanism is capable of rejecting exter-
nal disturbances. Thus, in the last simulation test, the performance
of the actuator is studied in presence of a constant torque exerted
to the joint as an external unknown disturbance. As illustrated in
Fig. 8, a constant torque of 0:5N  m is exerted at t 2 for 0:3 s

Fig. 10 Set-point tracking performance of the designed actuator: (a) the joint angular position and (b) the joint impedance
value

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 Fig. 11 Magnification of the joint angular position around the Fig. 12 Disturbance rejection behavior of the actuator
time intervals of [4.75, 8.75] (s) and [24.5, 28.5] (s)
The set point and real values of joint angular position and joint
impedance are plotted in Figs. 10(a) and 10(b), respectively.
to the joint. This kind of disturbance is common in some applica- These figures confirm that the actuator can track both position and
tions such as legged locomotion where the impedance value is impedance set points. However, there exists some narrow pulse
needed to be robust against external disturbances. The diagram of shaped errors in the joint impedance value when the impedance
the joint impedance shows that the control mechanism keeps the changes (e.g., t 13:5). The motors transient behavior until the
impedance in its desired value (Fig. 8). On the other hand, after l=r
qi values settle into their new set points makes some of the
elimination of the exerted disturbance, the effect of the external active springs be inactive or vice versa. Consequently, because of
torque on the joint angular position is removed by the controller. the discrete nature of the joint impedance, this kind of error
occurs. In addition, it can be seen that changing the joint imped-
6 Implementation ance makes the actuator angular position become distorted,
although this amount of interaction is negligible in many applica-
In this section, the proposed variable impedance actuator is tions. Focusing further on Fig. 10(a), we can see that higher im-
implemented on a simple prototype to show that our proposed pedance values result in more precise tracking behavior (Fig. 11).
control method is operational in real applications. The prototype The implemented actuator is tested in presence of unmeasured
is shown in Fig. 9. Unlike the simulation section, only three sets external disturbance. As shown in Fig. 12, in the time instance of
of real springs have been used here for two reasons: first, since we t 7:3 s, there occurs a collision between the joint and an external
are going to use this actuator in the application of leg locomotion, obstacle for about 0:5 s which causes the joint angular position to
these three sets are enough for us to benefit from variable imped- be kept fixed during this time interval. After eliminating the
ance in each leg. Moreover, as the second reason, just by using
three sets of real springs with three motors, we designed a bench-
mark with minimum number of required elements and cost to con-
firm that our proposed system and control algorithm can be
properly implemented with acceptable performance. According to
Fig. 9, two springs are located in the left side of the joint and the
other one is in the right side. Moreover, the required DC motors
and their PID controllers are replaced by three servomotors of the
type GWSVDNRSPSJ. In addition, a rotational multiturn potenti-
ometer is coupled to each servomotor in order to measure their
angular position. Another rotational potentiometer is also attached
to the joint to measure the joints angular position. Thus, there
exists one position sensor on each side of the springs and accord-
ing to Eq. (6), by determining their deflections and so the value of
l=r
di functions, the joint impedance can be calculated in each time
instance. The three springs have been chosen with the spring con-
stants of f530; 1200; 1200gN=m and their corresponding damp-
ing coefficients have the values of f0:72; 4:3; 4:3gN s=m,
respectively. Similar to the mechanical parts, the control hardware
used to implementation of the proposed control algorithm is sim-
l=r
ple. The motors set points, qid , are calculated through the pro-
posed optimization algorithm by the MATLAB. Moreover, an AVR
microcontroller has been used as an interface between the actuator
and the computer.
Similar to Sec. 5, a sine wave of sinpt is chosen as the input Fig. 13 Power consumption of the joint in four different fre-
signal to evaluate set-point tracking performance of the actuator. quencies and three different joint impedance values

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 external obstacle collision, the distributed variable impedance ac-
tuator is able to track the set points of angular position and imped-
ance, as shown in Fig. 12.
Finally, in order to show that the uncertainties and unmodeled
friction losses do not significantly affect the performance of the
joint, the power consumption of the implemented joint has been
measured in four different frequencies of f0:125; 0:25; 0:5; 1g
Hz and also three possible impedance values of f1730r 2 ;
2400r 2 ; 2930r 2 gNm=rad. The result is shown in Fig. 13.
According to the figure, the power consumption of the real actua-
tor is in the same order of the simulation. Moreover, similar to the
simulations, the power consumption grows by increasing the joint
impedance and also its frequency.
7 Conclusion and Future Works
In this paper, a distributed variable impedance actuator,
inspired from muscle and tendon structure, was proposed. It was
shown that the actuator has the capability to control the joint posi-
tion and impedance, independently. Using distributed torque pro-
duction makes this actuator usable in many robotic applications
which have limitations on the shape or size of actuators. First, the
structure of the actuator was explained and some of the motivating
characteristics of the system were represented. Regarding the
instability occurrence, we investigated the actuators stability
when impedance is switched between different values. Also, the
conditions of switching which maintain the systems stability
were represented. Moreover, we showed that the actuator can be
used in two different ways. The actuator has capability to realize a
passive piecewise linear spring to approximate each increasing
nonlinear spring characteristic. In addition, it can be used as an
active variable impedance actuator. Simulations showed that the
actuator suitably satisfies the expected set-point tracking and dis-
turbance rejection performance criteria. We also discussed the
actuators power consumption. Finally, by experimental imple-
mentation of the actuator, we confirmed that our proposed idea
has the capability to be used in practical applications.
As some potential future work, we intend to apply the proposed
actuator in leg locomotion applications which benefit from the
variable impedance during walking. In addition, the actuator can
be redesigned and applied in some other real applications, such as
wearable and rehabilitation robots, in order to verify its practical
performance. In addition, the condition of bump-less transfer for
impedance changing can be investigated for the system in order to
reach less conservative permissible switching profiles. Moreover,
in the passive mode of the actuation, a general algorithm with
explicit applicable rules and instructions for determining fixed
springs end side positions should be developed in order to ap-
proximate each nonlinear impedance characteristic with an ac-
ceptable fitting performance. Another idea for improving energy
efficiency of our actuator is exploiting locking mechanisms. As an
example of using locking mechanism, combination of SPEA with
MACCEPA can be mentioned [38].
Acknowledgment
The authors would like to thank University of Tehran for sup-
porting this research.
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