Development of a hyper dynamic manipulator utilizing joint stops

Usually there exist joint stops in a manipulator due to the mechanical structure of joints. In conventional manipulators, a collision between an arm and the structural joint stop is avoided by barriers from both software and electronic hardware. Comparing to these conventional manipulators, human utilizes structural joint stops usefully in many manipulations, especially in hyper dynamic manipulations such as golf swing. A basic concept and general method to utilize the structural joint stop in a manipulator, aiming at improving the dynamic capability of the manipulator in a large extent by simple and smart structure have been given in our previous work. To show the feasibility of the proposal, a hyper dynamic manipulator utilizing joint stops has been fabricated and fundamental experiments(see video) have been carried out. Experimental results have shown the important role of the joint stop, to realize an efficient hyper dynamic manipulation while in a smart structure. This paper describes the developed prototype and experimental results.