Development of a cable-driven redundant space manipulator with large bending angle by combining quaternion joints and segmented coupled linkages mechanism

A cable-driven redundant manipulator has significant potential in confined space applications, such as environmental exploration, equipment monitoring, or maintenance. A traditional design requires 3N driving motors/cables to supply 2N degrees of freedom (DOF) movement ability. The number of motors is 1.5 times that of the joints’ DOF, increasing the hardware cost and the complexity of the kinematics, dynamics, and control. This study develops a novel redundant space manipulator with decoupled cable-driven joints and segmented linkages. It is a 1680 mm continuum manipulator with eight DOF, consisting of four segmented linkages driven by eight motors/pairs of cables. Each segment has two equivalent DOF, which are realized by four quaternion joints synchronously driven by two linkage cables. The linkage cables of adjacent joints are symmetrically decoupled and offset at 180°. This design allows equal-angle movement of all the joints of each segment. Moreover, each decoupling driving mechanism is designed based on a pulley block composed of two fixed and movable pulleys. The two movable pulleys realize the opposite but equidistant motions of the two driving cables, i.e., pulling and loosening, assuring symmetrical movements of the two driving cables of each segment. Consequently, the equivalent 2N-DOF joints are driven only by 2N motors, significantly reducing the hardware cost and simplifying the mapping relationship between the motor angle/cable length and the joint angle. Furthermore, the bending range of each segment could reach 360°, which is three times that of a traditional design. Finally, a prototype has been developed and experimented with to verify the performance of the proposed mechanism and the corresponding algorithms.