Minimally Actuated Serial Robot

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel serial robot design with minimal actuation, using mobile actuators on passive joints to achieve wide-ranging motions with fewer actuators, demonstrated through simulations and experiments.

Contribution

The paper presents a new serial robot architecture with mobile actuators on passive joints, enabling complex motions with minimal actuation, which is modular and adaptable.

Findings

Robot can perform obstacle avoidance in simulations.

Experimental robot with a single mobile actuator can navigate confined spaces.

Design reduces the number of actuators needed for complex motions.

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a novel type of serial robot with minimal actuation. The robot is a serial rigid structure consisting of multiple links connected by passive joints and of movable actuators. The novelty of this robot is that the actuators travel over the links to a given joint and adjust the relative angle between the two adjacent links. The joints passively preserve their angles until one of the actuators moves them again. This actuation can be applied to any serial robot with two or more links. This unique configuration enables the robot to undergo the same wide range of motions typically associated with hyper-redundant robots but with much fewer actuators. The robot is modular and its size and geometry can be easily changed. We describe the robot's mechanical design and kinematics in detail and demonstrate its capabilities for obstacle avoidance with some simulated examples. In addition, we show how an experimental robot fitted with a single mobile actuator can maneuver through a confined space to reach its target.