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Kinematic design of a novel Multi-legged robot with Rigid-flexible coupling grippers for asteroid exploration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 June 2022

Qingpeng Wen ,
Jun He Open the ORCID record for Jun He [Opens in a new window]  and
Feng Gao
Qingpeng Wen
Affiliation:
State Key Laboratory of Mechanical Systems and Vibration, School of Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
Jun He*
Affiliation:
State Key Laboratory of Mechanical Systems and Vibration, School of Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
Feng Gao
Affiliation:
State Key Laboratory of Mechanical Systems and Vibration, School of Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: jhe@sjtu.edu.cn
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Abstract

Multi-legged robots with rigid-flexible coupling grippers have appealing applications to asteroid exploration with the microgravity. However, these robots usually have significantly complicated structures, which leads to a great challenge for the kinematic design.This paper proposes the kinematic design method for a novel multi-legged robot with the microspine gripper. First, the structure of the multi-legged asteroid exploration robot and the microspine gripper are demonstrated. Second, four performance evaluation indices, which are used to evaluate the stiffness, velocity, motion / force transfer efficiency and gripper attachment efficiency of the robot, are derived from the kinematic model. Non-dimensional design spaces of parameters to be optimized are drawn, and performance atlases are presented in design spaces. Third, the stiffness model of the microspine is derived. In addition, the constraint condition of the restoring spring is established, and the stiffness of restoring springs are optimized using the genetic algorithm. Several experiments are conducted to verify the stiffness model of the microspine. Finally, the prototype is developed and the experimental results validates the kinematic design method.

Keywords

kinematic designasteroid explorationmulti-legged robotperformance atlasmicrospine
Type
Research Article
Information
Robotica , Volume 40 , Issue 10 , October 2022 , pp. 3699 - 3725
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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