Prof. Volkert van der Wijk

Expertise	:	Dynamic & Static balancing, Deployable mechanisms, Synthesis, Kinetic Art
Website	:	https://kineticart.nl/
Member Organization	:	The Netherlands
Affiliation	:	TU Delft

My specific expertise is on dynamic balancing: how to design a mechanism/manipulator/robot that can move fast without causing any vibration in the base of the machine. This is a topic of dynamics where the best solutions are found by investigating the kinematics. If you have a robot that shakes too much, it is a hard challenge to dynamically balance it without too much additional mass, inertia, and complexity. However if you consider dynamic balance already in the very beginning of your robot design and use the best possible kinematics for balance, advantages solutions are found. This method and approach is named ‘inherent dynamic balancing’.

Since dynamically balanced mechanisms are also gravity balanced, the theory is just as suitable for the design of advantageous statically balanced mechanisms.

This is an example of a high speed dynamically balanced manipulator that I developed with specific kinematics for an advantageously balanced design with counter-masses solely about the base pivots:

I also work on the design of deployable structures, which I apply for my kinetic sculptures and kinetic architecture, often also combined with balancing.This is an example of the inside-out house:

This is the conceptual design of The Inside-out House, a house of which inside and outside become one. The house, having an apparently conventional design when 'closed', consists of series of pantograph roof trusses on both left and right side of the house. These pantograph roof trusses are constructed as movable linkages and are designed such that the mass of the roof and the mass of the walls are balanced with respect to one another. Therefore the top of the roof can be pulled down with minimal effort, having the walls move up such that the house opens itself to the surroundings. By opening the two large bascule windows in the roof, which are balanced by themselves, a passage is created from one side of the house to the other.

The design of the Inside-out House has been published in the following scientific article and book:

Van der Wijk, V.: Inherent Gravity Force Balance in Moving Architecture with New Designs. Proc. of the ATI 2020: “Smart Buildings, Smart Cities”, August 27-29, Izmir, Turkey (2020)

Van der Wijk, V.: Methodology for analysis and synthesis of inherently force and moment-balanced mechanisms – theory and applications. Dissertation, University of Twente (2014)