KARL: A new bio-inspired modular limb for robotic applications

Abstract

The modular and self-reconfigurable mechanisms are arising the interest of the robotics research community for their peculiarities of flexibility and cost effectiveness. In this scenario, this work presents a newly conceived device suitable for being used as a limb, as well as a planar two degrees of freedom manipulator, for robotic applications. The concept design here exposed merges the features of both parallel and serial kinematic mechanisms to obtain a limb whose primary characteristic is that of being independent from the frame to whom it is connected. In fact the actuation is realized by means of two linear motors directly arranged on the body and connected to the chassis through different closed kinematic chains. The manuscript introduces the formal aspects of this novel limb facing position, differential kinematics, expected performances and experimental results obtained thanks to a specifically built prototype.