Online calibration of a compact series elastic actuator

We present a method for the online calibration of a compact series elastic actuator installed in a modular snake robot. Calibration is achieved by using the measured motor current of the actuator's highly geared motor and a simple linear model for the spring's estimated torque. A heuristic is developed to identify operating conditions where motor current is an accurate estimator of output torque, even when the motor is heavily geared. This heuristic is incorporated into an unscented Kalman filter that estimates a spring constant in real-time. Using this method on a prototype module of a series elastic snake robot, we are able accurately estimate the module's output torque, even with a poor initial calibration.