A controller design on tendon-driven mechanisms

This paper introduces a special designed multi-joint tendon-driven system. Typical examples of the usage of the system are endoscopes which are used in medical and industrial applications. We have studied such the systems so far, a prototype system based on visual servo control was introduced. However, the motion control performance of the system was not enough for practical use. Especially, the joint angles sometimes rotate randomly. To solve this problem, the more simplified mechanism as a new prototype is developed in order to investigate the event during motions but the only computer simulation has been performed. This paper introduces the real prototype mechanism and a simple experimental result to improve the investigation as the first step.