Super Dragon: A 10-m-Long-Coupled Tendon-Driven Articulated Manipulator

Endo, Gen; Horigome, Atsushi; Takata, Atsushi

doi:10.1109/lra.2019.2894855

Cited by 48 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…We already know some long arms need this kind of enhancement. For example, our lab developed a 10-m long arm with a payload capacity of 10 kg called super dragon [2]. We hope to improve its payload so that it can carry more sensors and we think that is achievable by attaching flying watches.…”

Section: Two Levels Cooperationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The arm is made of CFRP and has an inner diameter of 96 mm and thickness of 2 mm. The simulation arm design is derived from an existing long-reach arm in our lab [2]. In our future experiments, all joints on PIA are identical.…”

Section: Simulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A long-reach robotic arm is usually designed for applications such as nuclear power plant decommissioning, [1,2] inspection, [3][4][5], and firefighting [6]. Some arms, such as [2][3][4], are redundant since long arms for those applications usually need to operate in environments filled with obstacles and the redundant Degree of Freedom (DOF) can negotiate the obstacles.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Additionally, some gravity compensating arm designs based on springs [7,8] and weight [9] may also be used for designing passive force compensating arms. Regarding active force compensating arms, in [1,2,10], specialized coupled tendon-driven arms that can compensate gravity were proposed. In [5,6], arms that apply water jets to counteract gravity were proposed.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…(1) They are difficult to be customized to different missions. (2) Their designs are difficult to be applied to other long arms. For example, the arm designed in [11] can counteract gravity using thrusts, which is useful for carrying sensors and picking up objects.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Flying watch: an attachable strength enhancement device for long-reach robotic arms

Pan

Endo

2019

Robomech J

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A long-reach robotic arm is useful for applications such as nuclear plant decommissioning, inspection, and firefighting. However, for such arms, a small external reaction force can result in large loads on proximal arm actuators because of long moment arms. This problem was previously solved by specialized arm designs that compensate external reaction forces. However, these arm designs are hard to be applied to other arms or customized to different missions. To overcome these difficulties, in this paper, we propose a modular thrust generating concept inspired by wristwatch designs, called flying watch, which can be attached to a robotic arm with mission-dependent attachment styles (attachment positions and orientations) and cooperate with actuators to enhance arm strength. We first introduce flying watch concept, design, and dynamics. Then we propose two levels of watch-actuator cooperation in quasistatic situations by introducing a problem called Watch Actuator Cooperation for Arm Enhancement (WACAE) and providing an example solution. The first level of cooperation is only watches adapt their thrusts to minimize actuator loads, which is generally applicable to varieties of arms. The second level cooperation is that not only do the watches adapt their thrusts but also the actuators cooperatively position the watches to optimal positions and orientations to counteract external reaction forces, which is suitable for redundant arms and can counteract external reaction forces more effectively. Finally, we present simulations to verify that flying watches can significantly reduce actuator loads using both levels of watch-actuator cooperation (the first level by 36.9% and the second level by 43.7%).

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Section: Two Levels Cooperationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Simulationmentioning

confidence: 99%