Design and kinematic analysis of a cable-driven anthropomimetic robotic arm

Abstract

Assistive robotic arms are being realized as potential tools to help the elderly and disabled people in improving their life quality. These arms are mostly serial rigid-links with joint mounted actuators, and are massive with high moments of inertia. Hence they are unsafe for users who are within the working envelopes. The objective of this research is to develop a robotic arm that is lightweight, and has similar working envelope as the human arm. In this report, the design and kinematic analysis of the robotic arm are presented. Three basic ‘anthropomimetic’ cable-driven parallel mechanism modules are proposed with joints at the centre and driving cables at the side, which are assembled to form a 7-DOF robotic arm. A joint-level design optimization is carried out to synthesize a 7-DOF robotic arm having a workspace that closely matches the human arm’s workspace.