A Large Telescopic Ratio Variable Stiffness Super Redundant Robotic Arm Based on Origami Principle

The super redundant robot has the natural flexibility and passive adaptability, which shows great potential for development in medical care. However, this feature also makes its telescopic and load carrying capacity weak, difficult to complete fine care operations and daily grasping tasks. In this paper, a large telescopic ratio variable stiffness super redundant robot is proposed. The robot has a large telescopic ratio and based on the bionic muscle driven variable stiffness theory, the stiffness of the super redundant robot can be adjusted in a large range. Based on the analysis of origami theory, the robot uses rigid origami mechanisms as the skeleton support, flexible gasbags as the spines, and the hybrid actuation is used to realize the telescopic, variable stiffness and omnidirectional bending motion. The characteristics of the single joint and the 6-joint super redundant robot are verified by experiments. These experiments confirm that the super redundant robot has a large telescopic and variable stiffness range, obtains a large bending deformation and working range, and can overcome the gravity generated by itself and the load, and has a high load capacity.