バンドルドワイヤドライブを用いた長尺軽量ロボットアームの開発

抄録

Wire drive mechanisms have flexibility of actuator location and are widely used for multi degree-of-freedom(Dof) robots. Conventional wire-driven mechanisms using metal wire ropes usually avoid sliding contact and collision of wires as much as possible by introducing multiple passive pulleys to ensure clear wire routes. We have proposed a novel wire-driven mechanism called “Bundled Wire Drive”. We have utilized multiple synthetic fiber ropes with low friction coefficients to drive multi DoF, and bundle them together, allowing sliding against each other. In our previous works, we have investigated the feasibility of the mechanism by evaluating the effect of sliding on tension transmission efficiency using one joint models. We developed a 3-DoF horizontal articulated robot arm using this mechanism. In this paper, we evaluated the performance of the robot arm. It was confirmed that pose repeatability was 0.40 mm, position stabilization time was 0.993 s, position overshoot was 4.45 mm, and minimum resolution was 0.059 deg in joint angle.