Using Voice Coils for Legged Locomotion

Robotics and electronics discussion Mechanical design and actuators
1

Has anyone ever tried or heard of using voice-coils to actuate a legged robot?

After reading about some research at MIT (http://robotic.media.mit.edu/projects/hardware/actuators/overview/overview.html) and about the overall benefits of voice coils, I’m considering making a very simple walker using voice coils for actuation.

Unfortunately, all commercial voice coils I’ve found online are both physically massive and insanely expensive, with the “smaller” ones running in the hundreds of dollars, so I’d have to make my own. It seems tedious, but doable, and I’ve seen a few examples online of people who have already built their own using off the shelf motor controllers to drive them.

Suggestions or comments? Does this seem interesting or am I wasting my time?

2

I will try to check again in the morning. It’s late, but what exactly is going on there?

The picture with the MS Paint drawing is very low res and its hard to read the lettering. It looks however like some sort of solenoid, so I don’t understand what’s special about it.

Regards. (this sounds interesting, but most non-rotary based linear actuators that I’ve seen are slow or/and power hungry.)