A SpringAided TwoDimensional Electromechanical Spine Architecture for BioInspired Robots This paper presents a distributed sixlink twodimensional electromechanical actuator that emulates a biological spine. The gearless actuator is made by stacking modules of Eshaped cores along with integrated springs. A coil excitation induces magnetic flux in the core, which produces electromechanical force in the air gap between two adjacent cores. The proposed actuator is driven by dcdc converters with current control. Electromechanical force analysis for the proposed spine architecture with different airgap distances and spring analysis that improve the actuatorxe2x80x99s performance are discussed. Experimental results show different biological motions with a prototype design. The prototype can produce a maximum torque of 1.4 Nm.

Modular Volumetric Actuators Using Motorized Auxetics Volume change has become a critical actuation method in robotics. However, the need for fluid flow or thermal processes to generate volume changes limits the durability, speed, and efficiency of these actuators. In this paper, we develop a new electromechanical actuator that volumetrically expands. By combining auxetic materials with a servo, we produce a simple isotropically expanding actuator that can be modularly composed. We discuss the symmetry considerations in selecting an appropriate auxetic framework for our actuator, eventually choosing a doublelayered polyhedral auxetic design. Characterization shows that a single actuator can expand in radius to 119% of the original size and generate 90N of force, while maintaining a small package and a speedy expansion  contraction cycle. Finally, we demonstrate the modularity of our actuators by linking three actuators to create a vertical tubecrawling robot. The small package and fast cycle time of our system highlight how viable these electromechanical volumetric actuators can be as an important actuator modality.