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Analysis Of Off-Axis Performance Of Compliant Mechanisms With Applications To Mobile Millirobot Design, Aaron Hoover, Ronald Fearing

Aaron M. Hoover

We present an approach to quantifying the off-axis stiffness properties of parallel compliant mechanisms used in the design of mobile millirobots. By transforming the stiffness of individual flexure elements and rigid links comprising a compliant mechanism into a global coordinate system, we enable the formulation of an equivalent mechanism stiffness. Using that stiffness in concert with an energy-based performance metric, we predict theperformance of a compliant mechanism subjected to a prescribed set of forces in the global coordinate system. We analyze a flexure-based Sarrus linkage and use the performance metric to improve the design by adding topological redundancy. Finally, our …