Host: The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
Name : [in Japanese]
Date : May 27, 2020 - May 30, 2020
Wire drive mechanisms have flexibility of actuator location and are widely used for multi degree-of-freedom 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 studies, we have investigated the feasibility of the mechanism and developed a three-degree-of-freedom horizontal articulated robot arm with the proposed mechanism. In this paper, we developed a six-degree-of-freedom robot arm with a mechanism that can manually change the rotation axis direction of the joint. The reconfigurability of the robot arm with the proposed mechanism was demonstrated by the motion in two different joint states.
