Anti-Backlash Mechanisms for Cycloidal Drive Robotic Actuators: Design and Evaluation

We design and experimentally evaluate two anti-backlash mechanisms for cycloidal reducers. The two mechanisms are integrated into variations of a proposed design of quasi-direct drive actuator. Three prototypes are realised to compare the two mechanisms against the baseline design. We evaluate the effectiveness of the anti-backlash mechanisms under varying preload with measurements of friction, backlash, and stiffness. The results demonstrate that the anti-backlash mechanisms are effective at reducing backlash by approx. 2-3x, at the expected expense of increased friction (<inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$&lt; $</tex-math></inline-formula>2x).