A tendon-driven manipulator, the CT Arm, has a specific tendon tractio
n transmission mechanism, in which a pair of tendons for driving a joi
nt is pulled from base actuators via pulleys mounted on the based-side
joints. The mechanism makes the most of the coupled drive function of
the tendon tractions and thus enables the lightweight manipulator to
exhibit enormous payload capability. By this tendon-driven mechanism,
a multijoint manipulator with super-redundant degrees of freedom could
be realized, which is suitable to the maintenance of nuclear reactors
. In this article, we introduce the CT Arm and discuss the possibility
of generating a multijoint maintenance manipulator for nuclear reacto
rs, which must have super-redundant degrees of freedom. A position-coo
rdination approach for a hyper-redundant manipulator to carry tools or
inspection equipment passing through a hole to a work location in a n
uclear reactor is also proposed. Computer simulation has been used to
show the validity of the hyper-redundant manipulator and the position-
coordination approach for the maintenance of nuclear reactors.