Hyper-redundant arm actuation with electropneumatic actuation system: Part I - Construction

This paper presents the structure of a backbone hyper-redundant arm with an electro-pneumatically system for position control. A system of cables actuated by DC motors is used for bending. Control system is based on a PIC microcontroller. The position of the robot can be obtained by bending it with the cables and by blocking the position of the elements we need, using the electro-pneumatically system. The major advantage of this type of actuation consists in the fact that the robot can be actuated using a boundary control by cables, the position blocking system for any element being relatively simple. The actuating system and the PIC microcontroller system is described and the main features of the global system are presented. The advantages of this robot architecture are discussed.