Design of a hyper-flexible assembly robot using artificial muscles

The paper presents the design of a hyper flexible robot, actuated by artificial muscles, based on the requirements of industrial assembly. The design process is inspired by biological examples and leads to a high-segmented kinematic structure with redundant degrees of freedom in order to increase the maneuverability of the robot. The actuators are arranged according to the agonist-antagonist principle of biological muscles to ensure the symmetric double sided deflection of the joints at each segment. Another advantage of the structure is the modular design. The mechanism is extendable by a simple, uniform mechanical interface. This contribution focuses on the mechanical structure, the kinematic behavior and the benefits of the chosen actuation principle in order to show the functionality of the robot. The prototype has six segments with twelve degrees of freedom, qualified by the corresponding number of actuators and their arrangement according to the mechanical structure. The end effector has four coupled degrees of freedom, three translational and one rotational.