Design of a single motor, tendon driven redundant manipulator with reduced driving joint torques

Abstract

Lightweight manipulator design is one of the diverse and rich research fields in the area of robotics. It has become increasingly important to develop manipulators with reduced cost, high energy efficiency and with low inertia. There are numerous design concepts proposed in the past decades such as designing lightweight joints or locating the actuators at the base. Reduction of number of actuators used has added advantages such as cost reduction, reduced power consumption, compact in design apart from reduction of weight. This paper presents a lightweight tendon drive redundant manipulator design with reduced joint torque using a single motor. The proposed design has reduced the number of actuators used. Thus the design is not only effective in reducing driving joint torques but also minimizes the number of actuators required and the power consumption. Driving joint torques computed for both conventional and for the proposed manipulator design highlight the significance of the proposed manipulator.