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Compliant Mechanisms for Motion/Force Amplifiers for Robotics

Chapter · January 2020

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-19648-6_4

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Jaroslav Hricko Štefan Havlík

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 Compliant Mechanisms for Motion/Force
Amplifiers for Robotics

Jaroslav Hricko(&) and Štefan Havlík

Institute of Informatics, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Banská Bystrica, Slovakia

{hricko,havlik}@savbb.sk

Abstract. The force and motion amplifiers are essential mechanical elements
used in building small and (micro) robotic devices. This paper brings a short
overview of some mechanical structures and their performance characteristics.
Three concepts of force amplifiers are analyzed and results from simulations are
discussed. The specific design of the linear motion force amplifier/motion
reduction for a high-accuracy positioning device with large payload capacity is
discussed.

Keywords: Mechanical amplifier
Compliant mechanisms

(Micro) robotic devices
Force transducer
Precise positioning

1 Introduction

Compact compliant mechanisms take applications in building robotic devices and a

precise positioning system. They exhibit advantages, as no friction, lightweight, no
noise, no need of lubrication, zero backlashes [1], etc., need in the field of small and
micro-robotics. The specific class of these mechanisms represents force or motion
amplifiers. In the case of micro-robotic devices, the majority of suitable linear actuators
can produce adequate forces, unfortunately with very small output displacement. For
instance: the stroke of the piezoelectric actuator is about 0.1%–0.2% of its length [2].
For this reason, motion amplifiers are really needed [2–4].
In principle, such mechanisms can be used as motion or force amplifiers/reducers.
Suppose a specific construction of a high accuracy linear positioning device with the
high payload capacity. The range of motions should be relatively small. For such case,
using lower power linear actuator with force amplifier seems to be much more effec-
tive. In general, the connection of an adequate driving unit with a compliant force or
motion reducing mechanisms can lead to acceptable results. Such an approach puts
some new requirements to design of these devices. According to the reduction ratio, the
amplifiers enable to reduce power, mass, and dimension of the driving unit and the
cost, as well. In the case of motion reducers, the significant improvement of accuracy
can be reached.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020

K. Berns and D. Görges (Eds.): RAAD 2019, AISC 980, pp. 26–33, 2020.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19648-6_4
 Compliant Mechanisms for Motion/Force Amplifiers for Robotics 27

2 Some Structures of Mechanical Amplifiers

The mechanical amplifiers basically use principal physical elements: differential

mechanical amplifier, lever principle, triangular mechanical amplifier [5], etc. Rem.:
For the purpose of this paper, there are mentioned mainly compliant mechanisms made
from one piece of material, i.e. without any rotary elements like gearwheel, rack-pinion
mechanism, rack-pinion paired with piston-like motion [6].
Well, known structures of displacement amplifier in microscale applications are a
bridge-type mechanism. There are known two main bridge-type topologies shown in
Fig. 1(a), where rigid arms are connected using flexural hinges, or Rhombus-type
where slim flexible arms are used (Fig. 1(b)). Both mechanisms exhibit compact
symmetrical structures. As a drawback of these structures, one can mention the limited
amplification ratio [11]. The enhanced mathematical models of both mechanisms,
based on the energy conservation law and the elastic beam theory is exhaustively
explained in [7]. The compound bridge type displacement amplifier has a larger lateral
stiffness and it is more suited for isolation and protection of an actuator than the
ordinary bridge-type amplifier [8]. The design of the high stiffness amplifier inspired by
materials of the cellular structure is described in [12]. This approach leads to the design
of specific motion amplifiers/reducers of high-level forces. Contemporary one can help
in the research of new next-generation materials with tailored mechanical properties
such as modulus, strength, strain, and Poisson’s ratios. An example of the half-bridge
small-scale out-of-plane actuator which enables tactile interfaces with displacement up
to 6.3 µm and blocking the force of 16 mN on the surface of the 2 mm2 gives [3].
The lever mechanism is one of most of the ancient mechanisms used by people.
Due to its easy realization, it found its use in the field of micro-robotics. One of the few
drawbacks is the relatively large stress concentrated in the flexible joints. An example
of a compliant lever mechanism is shown on the Fig. 1(d). Its real application is
described in [10] where two-stage lever-type amplifier was proposed (Fig. 1(g)). The
advantages of bridge-type and lever-type amplifiers (Fig. 1(e)) are used in new
amplifier structure [11]. Such device exhibits symmetrical design, a high amplification
ratio (34–48) and high load capacity (30 N). The design of new amplifier based on
symmetrical five bar profile with a large amplification ratio (24.4) and with high natural
frequency (573 Hz) is described in [9] (see Fig. 1(c)). In terms of the displacement
amplification and the natural frequency, it was shown that five bar structure is much
better than the four bar (bridge-type) amplifiers. Another mechanical amplifier with the
integrated piezoceramic actuator with 20:1 stroke amplification is shown in Fig. 1(j).
A general approach to the design of compliant mechanisms based on topology
optimization, where only basic information are required (main dimensions, input and
output displacements, forces, a location of input, output, basic frame). Such an
approach can lead to a very complex structure that can not be easy produced [13].
The specific group of mechanisms that could be used as mechanical amplifiers is
mechanism with straight-line output motions (see Fig. 1(k) and (l)). These devices are
inspired by known kinematical structures where the rotation of the joints is large, so
they can produce smaller movements [14]. The modified version is the Scot-Russell
mechanism used in the compliant micro-gripper [15]. This modification of the
28 J. Hricko and Š. Havlík

OUTPUT
OUTPUT

OUTPUT
INPUT INPUT
INPUT

OUTPUT BASE STRUCTURE

OUTPUT
a) b) c)
OUTPUT OUTPUT

INPUT
INPUT
INPUT BASE STRUCTURE

BASE STRUCTURE OUTPUT OUTPUT

d) e) f)
INPUT OUTPUT

OUTPUT INPUT
INPUT

OUTPUT

INPUT
OUTPUT

OUTPUT
g) h) i)
OUTPUT
OUTPUT
STRUCTURE
BASE

OUTPUT
INPUT INPUT INPUT
j) k) l)

Fig. 1. Compliant displacement amplifiers. (a) bridge-type [7], (b) Rhombus type [7],
(c) symmetric five bar structure [9], (d) lever mechanism [7], (e) bridge-lever-type amplifier
[11], (f) differential amplifier [5], (g) tensural displacement amplifier [10], (h) half-scissor
amplifier [3], (i) re-entrant hexagonal honeycomb [12], (j) 20:1 stroke amplification mechanism
[13], (k) Scott-Russell mechanism [14], (l) pantograph mechanism [16]

Scot-Russell mechanism provides 3.56 times bigger motion amplification ratio com-
paring to the conventional structure. The simple topology of the pantograph mechanism
for positioning stages is presented [16]. The design concept of the pantograph amplifier
with ratio 6 documented by the numerical results, FEM analysis, and experimental
results includes [4].

3 Design of Motion Reducer/Force Amplifier

The amplification ratio is the most important parameter when starts the design pro-
cedure of any amplifier. Mechanical amplifiers presented in Sect. 2, are dominantly
designed as amplifiers of linear motions. The mechanical stress/strains in flexural parts
depend on actual displacements of mechanisms. In the case of force amplifiers, the
 Compliant Mechanisms for Motion/Force Amplifiers for Robotics 29

effects of external load should be considered too. Naturally, there are several kinematic
structures that can satisfy the desired ratio. In order to show some differences three
versions of mechanisms designed for the same ratio are evaluated and compared. The
desired performance is given as follows:
– the range of input displacement of the linear motion actuator to be 5 mm
– the range of output displacement should be 1.5 mm, what corresponds to amplifi-
cation ratio Ramp = 0.3
– the load is given up to 5 kg.
The same material is considered in all versions with characteristics: Polylactic acid
(PLA, Young’s modulus E is 2852 MPa, density 1237 kg/m3, Poisson’s ratio 0.36 and
tensile stress at yield is 38 MPa). Other alternative materials for building physical
model are Polypropylene (PP) or Polyamide (PA). For these materials and production
technology (3D printing) the minimal thickness of the flexure segments should be
0.5 mm, optionally 0.8 mm.
For the purpose of this study, the mathematical models of the mechanisms were
built and the two-stage simulation procedure was adopted. In the first stage, the
mechanisms are without load and motions with corresponding stress/strains are cal-
culated. The second stage simulations include acting loads (5 kg). Such an approach
shows the influence of the load and enables to change of principal dimensions and/or
material. Subsequently, physical models of these mechanisms made by 3D print
technology have been experimented.

3.1 The Two Levers Amplifier

This mechanism connects a linear motion actuator with output parts of positioning
mechanisms. It adapts the ranges of motions/forces between both parts of the posi-
tioning system. The proposed kinematics is in Fig. 2(a). The similar concept and static
model is described in [10]. When considering an “ideal” model the dependence
between input displacement yIN and output displacement yOUT is expressed by a simple
relation

Input

L2 L1
yIN

L3 L4
yOUT

Output

a) b)

Fig. 2. (a) Kinematic scheme of two lever mechanism, (b) stress distribution (von Mises) during
motion without the load
30 J. Hricko and Š. Havlík

L2
L4 yOUT L2
L4
yOUT ¼ yIN ) Ramp ¼ ¼ ð1Þ
L1
L3 yIN L1
L3

3.2 Bridge-Type and Rhombus Mechanical Amplifier

Considering these type of mechanisms the amplification ratio strongly depends on the
angle h (see Fig. 3.). For instance: the motion amplifiers for piezoelectric actuator have
the angle h around 20° [17]. For our case of force amplifier, this angle should be more
than 45, or, closer to 90°. The change of this angle and the corresponding amplification
is related to the range of input motion.

L1b
θ Input

L1b
θ Output

b)
xIN/2 Input

Output
yOUT
a) c)

Fig. 3. (a) Geometry of the bridge-type mechanical amplifier with kinematic chain, (b) Geometry
of the Rhombus-type mechanical amplifier, (c) Distribution of arisen stress (von Mises) in the
Rhombus-type mechanism

Ling et al. in [7] expressed the analytical model for the displacement amplification
ratio based on the elastic beam method. As they show the idealized geometric model
e.g. [17] does not provide adequately accurate results, but it can be used for comparing
these different mechanisms. The output displacement based on the idealized geometric
model is [17]
0 vffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
ffi1
u
u  2 !
L1b cos h þ xIN =2
yOUT ¼ 2@L1b sin h  L1b t 1  A ð2Þ
L1b
 Compliant Mechanisms for Motion/Force Amplifiers for Robotics 31

3.3 Results
The design of the mechanisms in the first stage has been focused on carrying out the
motion amplification with desired input and output displacement and minimization of
the external dimensions with respect to the arisen stress. The second stage was focused
to optimize dimensions with respect to the acting load. Comparisons of dimensions of
all proposed mechanisms are shown in Table 1. Figure 4 shows the dependence of
output displacement and motion amplification ratio with respect to the input
displacement.

Table 1. Comparison of main parameters of the proposed mechanical amplifiers

Type Dimensions (mm) Scale Amp. ratio Max. stress
(MPa)
DS1 DS2 DS1 DS2 DS1 DS2
Double levera 135  90.3  10 180  99.1  10 1.46 0.317 0.141 36.57 37.97
Bridge typeb 50  100  10 70  170  10 2.38 0.212 0.181 37.68 36.62
Rhombus typec 40  57  5  10 40  70  10 1.22 0.262 0.228 37.61 31.772
DS1 – design stage 1 (without acting load), DS2 – design stage 2 (with acting load), Scale is
calculated as DS2 surface divide DS1 surface.
a
DS1 (mm): L1=48.35; L2=9.15; L3=21.48; L4=36.02; DS2 (mm): L1=67.5; L2=10; L3=39.6;
L4=37.7
b
DS1: L1=31.22 mm; h= 79.2 deg; DS2: L1=60.09 mm; h= 80.32 deg
c
DS1: L1=21.125 mm; h= 77.076 deg; DS2: L1=27.39 mm; h= 78.51 deg

When compare characteristics of proposed mechanisms can be seen that the

smallest influence of the acting load on the stress exhibits the Rhombus type, which
provides the smallest dimensions of the design. On the other side, the amplification
ratio exhibits the largest range from all of the analyzed structures (from 0.3 to 0.62).
Another conclusion is that the dimensions of analyzed mechanisms are relative big
despite using flexible materials.
As shown in Table 1 an “ideal” amplification ratio is diametrically different with
respect to the desired value (Ramp = 0.3) and FEM simulations too. Comparing to the
mechanical amplifiers, as discussed above, the amplification ratio is not constant. The
amplification ratio of DS2 mechanisms indicates infinite values as shown in Fig. 4(b).
This is due to the flexibility of the material and the topology of the mechanism. The
suitable example is the double lever mechanism, where the dependence of the ampli-
fication ratio between both design stages is remarkable. The mechanism is also
deformed (reshaped) due to the acting load without any input motion.
As a consequence of non-linear output movements, for precise position control, it is
necessary to measure/calibrate real displacement characteristics. Within suitable
approaches is using strain gauge measurements of loads/displacements, or, it is possible
to use wireless (contactless) displacements sensing [18]. Here the resonant circuit is
directly integrated into the compliant structure and the actual position is related to the
changes of the electromagnetic field.
32 J. Hricko and Š. Havlík

a) b)

Fig. 4. (a) Dependence of output displacement yOUT for selected mechanisms (b) Dependence of
the motion amplification ratio

4 Conclusion

This paper presents some compliant structures of mechanical amplifiers most fre-
quently applied in small positioning devices. The main reason for their use is the
adaptation of the displacement/force of actuators to desired motion/force parameters on
the side driven mechanisms. There are analyzed three types of mechanisms can be used
as force amplifiers/motion reducers for linear motion positioning mechanisms with
specific requirements on motion parameters, amplification ratio, dimensions, and load.
As showed calculations for all compared mechanisms their characteristics are very
different with respect to specifications. The Rhombus type amplifier enables relatively
large input displacements at smallest external dimensions. Except for lever mechanism,
the input-output relations for displacement/force are not perfectly linear. So, for the case
of high accuracy positioning this fact should be taken into account in control. It is shown
that the design process should include three phases: careful simulation/optimization of
geometry, building the physical model and measurements of characteristics.
Presented study and comparisons are made mainly from the static point of view.
The study of dynamical performances will be a subsequent step in future work.

Acknowledgment. This work was supported by the Slovak Research and Development Agency
under the contract No.: APVV-14-0076 – “MEMS structures based on load cell”, contract No.:
APVV-18-0117 and by the national scientific grant agency VEGA under project No.: 2/0155/19 –
“Processing sensory data via Artificial Intelligence methods”.

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