Validation of dynamic torque response of an electrorheological (ER) clutch

It is now well established that using actuators, which have faster speeds of response than d.c. servomotors, can solve the positional errors of the robot arms. One of the possible robotic actuators can be an electro-rheological (ER) clutch. To justify this objective, the authors measured the output torque response of a co-axial ER clutch. However, due to the dynamic inefficiency of a torque transducer, the measured torque response is inaccurate for analytical studies. Therefore, this measured torque is signal processed by using the transfer functions of this torque sensor and a filter to yield the ER torque response. The validity of this ER torque is investigated by comparing the numerical errors between the measured torque and its inverse torque response. From the torque error analysis, it is concluded that the ER clutch can be an actuator to improve the positioning accuracies of the robot arms.