Development of a lightweight manipulator with constraint mechanism

Abstract

Hyper-redundant manipulators are an interesting solution for flexible manipulations. While these types of manipulators can be used in complex environments, often their weight becomes impractically heavy due to the large number of actuators required for a large number of degrees of freedom. Biomimetic manipulators have received attention as a possible solution for the above problem, by imitating biological systems in which a large number of joints are driven by cooperation of muscles. However, these approaches often don't achieve the desired weight reduction as a whole system, due to the need for an air compressor. As such, the purpose of our research is a hyper-redundant manipulator designed with the intention of weight saving over the whole system.