DEVELOPMENT AND APPLICATION OF THE TELBOT SYSTEM A NEW TELE ROBOT SYSTEM

Abstract

This paper presents a new tele robot system, trade named TELBOT. The robot is developed by Hans Walischmiller GmbH and has been used for steam generator maintenance in Canada and for decommis­ sioning glove boxes in Japan. This is a robot with six revolution joints and a unique drive system that allows unrestricted motion of each joint. All of the electronics, cables, motors, reduction gears and encoders are contained within the unique base of the manipulator. The transmission of motions of the arm are translated from the base drive system by a set of concentric tubes that make up the links and sets of bevel gears that make up the joints. There is no electrical parts in the arm itself. therefore, all the revolution joints can rotate over 360 degrees contin­ uously and the arm itself is relatively compact and lightweight. There is no closed-form solution of the inverse kinematics, because the wrist joint axes do not intersect at one point. The method to solve the inverse kinematics problem of series-chain manipulators with general geometry proposed in the earlier papers of the second author is used to find all the 16 possible configurations. It greatly facilitates selecting the optimal configuration for a given workspace and avoiding obstacles.