A Hyper-Redundant Robot Development for Tokamak Inspection

Hyper-redundant manipulators are an alternative to serial manipulators that can be used for inspection and maintenance in constrained location. They are highly suitable for inspections in tokamak environment, where the robotic systems need to have multiple degrees of freedom, light weight, fast deployment and retrieval mechanism and high dexterity. In this paper, the design concept and control mechanism of a 3 link tendon driven hyper-redundant inspection system is presented. The paper details the structural design, kinematic modelling, control algorithm development and practical implementation of the hyper-redundant robot with experiments. The prototype developed is used for evaluating the control mechanism and provide a proof of concept.