Kinematic analysis of a hyper-redundant robot with application in vertical farming

Abstract

The paper presents the forward kinematic analysis for a new hyper redundant robot with applications in vertical farming inspections and harvesting tasks. The high dexterity and the ability to adapt to various unstructured environments makes this type of robot a good solution for this kind of applications. The robot consists of seven 3-RPS (Revolute-Prismatic-Spherical) parallel modules resulting in a 21 DOF structure. The forward kinematic analysis of one module is presented first and then for the entire structure in detail. The obtained equations are then implemented in MATLAB and validated using a virtual robot model.