Structural Design and Experimentation of a Reconfigurable Extendable Cable-Driven Manipulator

Abstract

Cable-Driven Manipulators (CDM), which feature a flexible arm and spatial adaptability, are commonly used in engineering fields such as inspection and exploration. Adaptability and application cost can be achieved through structural innovations in the arm body and the driving control box. In this letter, we propose a novel Cable-Driven Manipulator composed of reconfigurable inner skeleton and extendable shell. The reconfigurable extendable cable driven manipulator (RECDM) allows adjustable arm length and degrees of freedom with a compact driving control box. Correspondingly, we proposed a reconfigurable redundant kinematics (RRK) algorithm to optimize the arm length in the case of obstacle situations. In experiments, the feasibility of this reconfigurable structure was demonstrated firstly. Then, the manipulator successfully traced a circular trajectory using the distal joint, demonstrating high-precision single-joint motion and structural stability, with a roundness error of less than 10%. Static loading shows that under a maximum load of 500 g, the arm maintains z-axis displacement within 4.8 mm. Furthermore, multi-ring transportation task validates that it is capable of accurately transporting and grasping objects under light-load conditions, demonstrating the stability and precise motion performance of the complete arm.