Abstract
Replacement of rigid bars with slender flexible links in tensegrity robots improves the kinematic performance of the mechanism, and broadens its potential applications. Nonetheless, most existing analysis methods for tensegrity robots do not account for the large deformations of flexible links. This paper presents a general modeling and analysis approach for flexible link tensegrity robots. The interconnection between flexible links and cables is defined using connectivity and coefficient matrices. The flexible link tensegrity robot is modeled as a group of hyper-redundant mechanisms constrained by cables, utilizing the discretization-based method. Subsequently, the analytical model of flexible link tensegrity robots is formulated as a set of nonlinear algebraic equations. Using this model, the Newton-Raphson algorithm is employed to identify equilibrium configurations in a variety of given conditions. Finally, a prototype of a planar flexible link tensegrity robot was constructed, and preliminary experiments were conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed methods. The experimental results demonstrate the presented method in this study can achieve precise robot control.
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Acknowledgement
This research work was supported in part by the National Key R &D program of China under the Grant 2019YFA0709001, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China under the Grant 52022056 and 51875334.
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Kang, Y., Chen, J., Kong, L., Wang, H., Chen, G. (2023). Kinematic and Static Analysis of Flexible Link Tensegrity Robots. In: Yang, H., et al. Intelligent Robotics and Applications. ICIRA 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 14273. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-6498-7_9
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