A DOF state controllable & driving shared solution for building a hyper-redundant chain robot

This paper puts forward a novel design solution for building a 3D hyper-redundant chain robot (HRCR) system, which consists of linked, identical modules and one base module. All the joints of this HRCR are passive and state controllable, and share common inputs introduced by wire-driven control, no matter how many degrees of freedom (DOF) are implemented using different numbers of modules. The prototype developed here, named 3D-Trunk, is used as a proof of concept. We will present here its concept, mechanical and embedded controller design and the implementation.