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A Symmetric Three Degree of Freedom Tensegrity Mechanism with Dual Operation Modes for Robot Actuation

Tensegrity robots that use bio-inspired structures have many superior properties over conventional robots with regard to strength, weight, compliance and robustness, which are indispensable to planetary exploration and harsh environment applications. Existing research has presented various tensegrit...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Wang, Tianyuan, Post, Mark A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8161459/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34069932
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/biomimetics6020030
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author Wang, Tianyuan
Post, Mark A.
author_facet Wang, Tianyuan
Post, Mark A.
author_sort Wang, Tianyuan
collection PubMed
description Tensegrity robots that use bio-inspired structures have many superior properties over conventional robots with regard to strength, weight, compliance and robustness, which are indispensable to planetary exploration and harsh environment applications. Existing research has presented various tensegrity robots with abundant capabilities in broad scenarios but mostly not focused on articulation and manipulability. In this paper, we propose a novel tensegrity mechanism for robot actuation which greatly improves the agility and efficiency compared with existing ones. The design integrates two separate tensegrity substructures inspired by shoulder and hip joints of the human body and features a similar form to a hexapod platform. It mitigates detrimental antagonistic forces in the structural network for optimising actuation controllability and efficiency. We validated the design both on a prototype and in a Chrono Engine simulation that represents the first physically accurate simulation of a wheeled tensegrity robot. It can reach up to approximately [Formula: see text] , [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] in pitch, yaw and roll motion, respectively. The mechanism demonstrates good agility and controllability as an actuated robot linkage while preserving desirable properties of tensegrity structures. The design would potentially inspire more possibilities of agile tensegrity implementations that enable future robots with enhanced compliance, robustness and efficiency without a tradeoff.
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spelling pubmed-81614592021-05-29 A Symmetric Three Degree of Freedom Tensegrity Mechanism with Dual Operation Modes for Robot Actuation Wang, Tianyuan Post, Mark A. Biomimetics (Basel) Article Tensegrity robots that use bio-inspired structures have many superior properties over conventional robots with regard to strength, weight, compliance and robustness, which are indispensable to planetary exploration and harsh environment applications. Existing research has presented various tensegrity robots with abundant capabilities in broad scenarios but mostly not focused on articulation and manipulability. In this paper, we propose a novel tensegrity mechanism for robot actuation which greatly improves the agility and efficiency compared with existing ones. The design integrates two separate tensegrity substructures inspired by shoulder and hip joints of the human body and features a similar form to a hexapod platform. It mitigates detrimental antagonistic forces in the structural network for optimising actuation controllability and efficiency. We validated the design both on a prototype and in a Chrono Engine simulation that represents the first physically accurate simulation of a wheeled tensegrity robot. It can reach up to approximately [Formula: see text] , [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] in pitch, yaw and roll motion, respectively. The mechanism demonstrates good agility and controllability as an actuated robot linkage while preserving desirable properties of tensegrity structures. The design would potentially inspire more possibilities of agile tensegrity implementations that enable future robots with enhanced compliance, robustness and efficiency without a tradeoff. MDPI 2021-05-18 /pmc/articles/PMC8161459/ /pubmed/34069932 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/biomimetics6020030 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Wang, Tianyuan
Post, Mark A.
A Symmetric Three Degree of Freedom Tensegrity Mechanism with Dual Operation Modes for Robot Actuation
title A Symmetric Three Degree of Freedom Tensegrity Mechanism with Dual Operation Modes for Robot Actuation
title_full A Symmetric Three Degree of Freedom Tensegrity Mechanism with Dual Operation Modes for Robot Actuation
title_fullStr A Symmetric Three Degree of Freedom Tensegrity Mechanism with Dual Operation Modes for Robot Actuation
title_full_unstemmed A Symmetric Three Degree of Freedom Tensegrity Mechanism with Dual Operation Modes for Robot Actuation
title_short A Symmetric Three Degree of Freedom Tensegrity Mechanism with Dual Operation Modes for Robot Actuation
title_sort symmetric three degree of freedom tensegrity mechanism with dual operation modes for robot actuation
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8161459/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34069932
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/biomimetics6020030
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