Development of Mechanism to Estimate the Amount of Contraction in Wire-Driven Telescopic Leg

Abstract

We develop a multi-legged robot with wire-driven telescopic legs. When a load is applied to the legs, length of the leg is shortened because the wire is stretched. In this paper, we develop a mechanism to estimate an amount of contraction of the legs. The mechanism consists mainly of a force sensor and urethane rubber. However, a problem is that a measurement range of force sensor is restriction. A measurement range is expanded by using urethane rubber. The amount of contraction depends on the length of the leg and the applied load. We construct an formula to estimate the amount of contraction depending on the value of the length and applied load by an experiment. We compare estimation of the mechanism with true value to evaluate the usefulness of the developed mechanism.