Mechanical safety of automatic door by using PFVA based on 2-stage star compound gear

Abstract

In this study, a new mechanism is proposed by using Parallel Force/ Velocity Actuator (PFVA) based on 2-stage star compound gear train. PFVA has two distinct actuators. One is force actuator (FA) with a low reduction gear train, the other is velocity actuator (VA) with a high reduction gear train. The combination of two independent and parallel inputs provides a mixing of control parameters such as position, velocity, and force in any kinds of combination. It means to enhance the dynamic range of the combination actuator. This study is carried out more focus on investigating mechanical safety characteristics of the proposed PFVA with 2-stage star compound gear. Mechanical safety can be achieved by limiting the torque on the FA and thus making it a backdriveable input. We present a numerical simulation to show that the proposed PFVA system can be mechanically safe under collision due to the back-driveability of the FA. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.