ISOTROPIC DESIGN OF TENDON-DRIVEN MANIPULATORS

This paper deals with the synthesis of mechanical transmission structu res for tendon-driven manipulators. Based an static force analysis, ne cessary conditions are developed for the synthesis of tendon-driven ma nipulators with isotropic transmission characteristics. It is shown th at an n degree-of-freedom (dof) manipulator will possess the isotropic transmission characteristics, if it satisfies two isotropic condition s. Furthermore, a design equation is derived for the construction of i sotropic transmission structure matrices and a three-dof spatial manip ulator is synthesized to demonstrate the methodology. It is shown that the isotropic design leads to a more uniform tendon force distributio n.