Design and Analysis of a Quadrangular Truss-Shaped Deployable Robotic Manipulator for Grasping Large Scale Objects

This paper presents a novel quadrangular truss-shaped deployable robotic manipulator with metamorphic mobility, which has higher stiffness than the traditional serial robotic manipulator and therefore suitable for grasping of the large-scale unknown objects. Firstly, a quadrangular prism mechanism module is introduced as the basic unit of robotic manipulator, general procedures for designing this type of robotic manipulator is provided. Secondary, the mobility of the basic metamorphic mechanism module in this kind of robotic manipulator is analyzed by using the constraint-synthesis method and general Grubler-Kutzbach equation. Thirdly, the workspace for the proposed manipulator consisting of six identical units is also analyzed, which demonstrates that the manipulator has large reachable space, the kinematic equation of the proposed model is also created. Finally, the grasping simulation in Inventor is also conducted, which shows that the proposed manipulator has shape adaptability to different types of the grasping objects.