A large part of the Netherlands is below sea level, this includes the densely populated ”randstad” area. This part would flood without the Dutch dike system. The goal of the ROSE project is to develop a team of robotic sensors that will autonomously acquire data about the composition, consistency and condition of a dike. We focus on energy efficient walking to enable ground-based dike measurements. To achieve this, we look at an alternative mean of actuation called Controlled Passive Actuation (CPA).
In CPA, a mechanical storage element is used as the mayor source of energy and a Continuously Variable Transmission is used to control the energy flow between the energy source and the load. Currently, we are working on a version of CPA that utilises a spring as source of energy and the Dual-Hemi CVT (Shown in the Figure below), a CVT that is developed specifically for CPA in collaboration with Demcon.