Elephant-inspired tapered cable-driven hyper-redundant manipulator: design and performance analysis.

Area of Science:

• Robotics
• Mechanical Engineering

Background:

• Cable-driven hyper-redundant manipulators (CDHM) offer high flexibility and adjustable stiffness.
• CDHMs are crucial for operations in confined and obstacle-rich environments like aerospace and nuclear facilities.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce a novel CDHM with a conical arm structure inspired by elephant trunks.
• To analyze the kinematic and dynamic performance impacts of the manipulator's taper.
• To validate the conical structure's advantages through experimental testing.

Main Methods:

• Developed a novel CDHM with a conical arm structure, contrasting with traditional cylindrical designs.
• Conducted dynamic and kinematic analyses to evaluate the effect of the taper.
• Fabricated three prototype manipulators with varying tapers for experimental validation.

Main Results:

• The conical structure significantly reduces self-weight and gravity's moment arm.
• Experimental tests confirmed the theoretical analysis and the rationality of the conical design.
• The new configuration demonstrated improvements in cable stroke, joint speed, and maximum driving force.

Conclusions:

• The elephant trunk-inspired conical CDHM offers significant performance advantages over cylindrical designs.
• The conical structure is a viable and effective design for enhancing CDHM capabilities.
• This novel configuration is well-suited for applications requiring high dexterity in challenging environments.