The Mantis Robot—and Hydraulic Servos?

hydraulic servo by-Tekke

Recent years have brought innovation with hydraulic servo based technology. The Mantis Robot, for instance, is one example of a hydraulic controlled robot. It’s part of a recent trend toward more innovation in hydraulics rather than electronic servos. We only service electronic servos from Rexroth and Indramat so know which kind of servos you have before you pick up the phone to ask for help.

Hydraulics are the newest addition to more stable technologies. They’re known as being notorious for energy consumption, unreliable, and messy. But with recent improvement, hydraulics are getting better. But are they better than electronic servos? Maybe—only time will tell. We’re still betting on electronic servos as the better of the two because electricity is easier to manage than hydraulic fluids.

The Mantis Robot uses hydraulics to move around with its legs, a lot like the mechanical spiders in movies like Wild Wild West. If you remember in that movie when the hydraulic lines were cut, the walking spider died a crippling death because it lost all ability to move. Without hydraulic pressure to keep its legs stable, it went south quickly. We figure that the Mantis Robot isn’t made for going into battle with Will Smith but the truth is that once hydraulic pressure is lost, so is its stability.

Electronic servos, on the other hand, don’t explode in a fury of hydraulic fluids when they fail. While they can be just as dangerous as hydraulic based systems, they don’t shoot out pressurized oil during a problem and generally fry only themselves or circuits connected to them. By comparison to having hydraulic fluids everywhere, a cut cable just ends the electronic connection and it stops running.

For those reasons, we know that electronic servos will be around for a long time to come. They’ve proved their worth over and over again through decades of use in manufacturing and printing. And that’s why we choose to fix them instead of telling our customers to move on.

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