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A wide variety of new-generation actuators have been studied, and this report describes interdisciplinary evaluation from the viewpoint of which of them is most appropriate to required multi-degree-of-freedom drive performance. First, about 80 evaluation aspects were considered for actuator performance, and 16 important aspects were extracted useful for the interdisciplinary comparison. In consideration of number of prior studies and their capability, this evaluation dealt with electromagnetic, electrostatic, piezoelectric, magnetostrictive, functional fluid, optical, and wire-haulage actuators. The evaluation results were plotted and summarized for 166 studies and 451 products of the one-degree-of-freedom actuators, clarifying features and position of each actuator. Next, multi-degree-of-freedom structures were classified, and their adequacy to each drive principle was investigated. Based on this investigation, multi-degree-of-freedom structures were suggested exploiting the drive characteristics. Finally, bottlenecks and breakthroughs were summarized toward practical design of the desirable multi-degree-of-freedom structures. |
