Flexure design of a compliant modular hyper-redundant manipulator

A manipulator with multiple degrees of freedom such as a hyper-redundant manipulator is generally applied in many applications ranging from medicine to space exploration. Most importantly, the multiple degrees of freedom of the manipulators allow the user to access areas where a rigid body has difficulty accessing. Kinematics analysis of the manipulator is required for the user to control and manage the workspace under such a constrained area. Through this paper, we designed a compliant mechanism to create such a hyperredundant manipulator with multiple degrees of freedom. The designed manipulator consists of three modules with a total of 18 degrees of freedom. Each module has zero joints but instead has flexure which provides 6 degrees of freedom of possible motions including twisting. The finite element analysis was used for analyzing the structure of the manipulator and for identifying maximum stress. End effector position was determined based on a kinematic analysis of a rigid body and was compared to the actual position. However, with a compliant structure, the deformation of the compliant structure is nonlinear. Therefore, there was an error while comparing the computed position with the actual position. There are also drawbacks of the compliant mechanism for repetitive motion which causes fatigue failure.