Mechanical Design, Modeling and Simulation of Human-Size Cable-Driven Over-Actuated Robotic Arm

This paper presents new mechanical design of a human-sized, lightweight, redundant, over-activated and cable-driven robotic arm dedicated to development of collaborative industrial humanoid. Mechanical design of the robotic arm includes some original technical solutions which reduce total mass of the mechanism, includes passive compliance in the structure and implements redundant number of servo-motors and corresponding mechanical degrees of freedom. Robot motion is achieved by synergy of operation of numerous driving motors that move rob joints by pulling/releasing non-tensile cables. By implementing of the redundant number of driving motors, system achieves enhanced mobility and manipulative capabilities, optimize power consumption and increases robustness of the system against the failures of servo-drives. The set of technical requirements imposed in the paper corresponds to the biological model of the human-size arm. Selected references in this field of research are listed in the paper, too. At the end of paper, some characteristic simulation results are presented, analyzed and discussed with aim to validate the obtained design and theoretical results.