DEFLECTION CHARACTERISTICS OF SOME SPECIAL CONFIGURATIONS OF SNAKE-TYPE ROBOTS

The redundant robots analyzed here have large numbers of degrees of fr eedom. Such robots are analogous to snake or tentacles and are useful for operation in highly constrained environments and novel forms of lo comotion - here it has been defined as critical manipulation. In this paper the end-point deflection of hyper-redundant robots have been stu died by parameterization of the flexible links of the robot manipulato r. A number of planar configurations of the redundant manipulator were taken into consideration for the present study and the configuration which gives minimum end-point deflection has been recommended for the critical manipulation. This work is significant for some of the resear ch activities recently going on in NASA's Kennedy Space Center towards the application of hyper-redundant robots for manipulation inside the space Shuttle Cargo Bay.