ANALYSIS AND SYNTHESIS OF OPEN-ENDED TENDON STRUCTURES

Abstract

The article deals with the analysis and synthesis of open-ended tendon transmissions, which are widely used in robotics, mainly at dextrous hands. A general theoretical approach is introduced, feasibility and isomorphism of arbitrary tendon structures are investigated with the help of defining normalized, schematic and canonical form of manipulators. Kinematic description is discussed based on the structure matrix, and solution methods of inverse tasks are presented. For the purpose of constructional synthesis, mini- mum and maximum number of tendons and pulleys are analysed. To enable practical use of the results, several algorithms are developed. As an application example for system optimization, transmission design of the TUB-PC multifingered robot hand is presented.