Kinematic Modeling of Scissor-Mechanism-Based Curvilinear Actuator

Conventional electric motors usually provide rotary or linear motions to actuate mechatronic systems. In order to accomplish complex tasks, many research studies have been conducted to develop intelligent actuation mechanisms capable of converting simple input motions into complex target motions. In this paper, we propose a novel type of curvilinear actuator to achieve non-linear output motions, which is based on a scissor mechanism with off-centered link position in each unit. A kinematic modeling framework is also presented to compute the motion trajectories of the proposed scissor-mechanism-based curvilinear actuators (SMCA). Simulation results have demonstrated that, by changing the link position of each scissor unit, the created SMCA can achieve different types of output curves and poses.

I. Introduction

Modern mechatronic systems, such as assembly line robots and surgical robots, often need to perform complex target motions depending on their specific tasks. To achieve this goal, many intelligent actuator mechanisms are developed. For example, an origami-inspired pneumatic actuator was proposed in [1] to realize robust elongation and contraction motions. Another origami-based multi-channel actuator was developed by authors in [2] to achieve flexible bending movements for gastrointestinal endoscopic applications. Other studies also used auxetic-inspired structures to realize crawling [3], bending [4] and twisting [5] motions for actuators. On the other hand, in order to achieve complex target pose with fewer actuation degrees of freedom (DOF), many researchers have encoded the deformation information into the initial geometry of the actuators [6]–[8].