| Project/Area Number |
14550230
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
Intelligent mechanics/Mechanical systems
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| Research Institution | TOKYO INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY |
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Principal Investigator |
OMATA Toru Tokyo Institute of Technology, Interdisciplinary Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Associate Professor, 大学院・総合理工学研究科, 助教授 (10262312)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
MORI Osamu Japan Aerospace Exploration, Agency Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Associate Professor, 宇宙航空研究開発機構・宇宙科学研究本部, 助手 (30313331)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2002 – 2003
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| Project Status |
Completed (Fiscal Year 2003)
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| Budget Amount *help |
¥3,400,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,400,000)
Fiscal Year 2003: ¥1,400,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,400,000)
Fiscal Year 2002: ¥2,000,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,000,000)
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| Keywords | parallel robot / self-reconfigurable robot / unactuated joint / robot / 自己変形ロボット |
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| Research Abstract |
One way to make robots more versatile is to increase the number of actuated joints. However, this often makes them too heavy. Manipulators with unactuated joints have been studies. Due to unactuated joints, such robots have poorer performance than full-actuated manipulators. We have proposed a novel concept of coupling that enables tow or more underactuated robots to self-reconfigure to a parallel robot which has the same number of actuators as that of degrees of freedom. As an example, we have developed a self-reconfigurable planar parallel robot consisting of four three-joint limbs and an output link on the horizontal plane. Only the proximal joint of each limb is actuated. The robot has small workspace if it is not reconfigurable. It can self-reconfigure by decoupling one of its limbs from its output link and re-coupling the limb at another point of the output link. This enables the robot to have larger workspace and makes the robot more adaptable to the change of tasks. We have shown that the robot can self-reconfigure without any additional actuators if the uncertainty singularity of the parallel mechanism is used for decoupling and coupling.
We have also developed self-reconfigurable parallel robots which can change configurations between four-bar and five-bar linkages in the vertical plane. They are mounted on mobile platforms to make them mobile. The combined mobile robots can balance themselves making use of their upper body structures of the parallel mechanisms. They can also form a three-dimensional structure, which enable them to gain workspace in the three-dimensional space. We succeeded a demonstration of the robots at the exhibition held by the Robotics Society of Japan on Sept. 21, 2003. The attendance of the exhibition is more than 700.
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