Design for Bidirectional Movement of Bendable Tubular Linear Motor

In recent years, developed countries especially Japan has been facing the problem of a shrinking workforce due to the declining birthrate and aging population. In terms of the declining birthrate, there is a decrease in the number of active workers in younger generation. And in terms of the aging population, there is a demand for nursing care and physical support. These trends require the exoskeleton robot as a robotic support for human physical tasks and flexible robots that can move close range to humans, but such robots are still in their early stages of development. To bring robots closer to ideal performance, focusing on the actuators and improving them is the key to the next step. Direct drive electromagnetic linear motors are not only high power without transmission loss by generating power in the straight direction, but also have a fast response time due to their electrical control. Therefore, bendable structures have the potential to be widely used in engineering systems in general.