Development of Giacometti Arm With Balloon Body
Masashi Takeichi, Koichi Suzumori, Gen Endo, Hiroyuki Nabae
Abstract
As part of our research on developing different types of Giacometti robots, the potential of a very long, very light, and very simple robot arm with a balloon body is discussed in this paper. Although this robot arm is not suitable for precise positioning, rapid motion, and high load capacity, which are the aspects most conventional robots focus on, it is designed for very specific purposes, such as inspection using a small camera at its tip and is designed to be essentially safe even if it falls down or hits an object. This robot arm is realized using helium-filled balloon bodies and thin pneumatic muscles. The arm achieves self-weight compensation, and the possibility of designing a very long arm is confirmed theoretically and experimentally. A prototype of a 7-m-long cantilever arm is designed, developed, and tested.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{ral2017_developmentofgia,
title = {Development of Giacometti Arm With Balloon Body},
author = {Masashi Takeichi and Koichi Suzumori and Gen Endo and Hiroyuki Nabae},
booktitle = {RA-L 2017},
year = {2017}
}