Motion simulation of six-bar tensegrity robot based on Adams

Abstract

Tensegrity traced back to the early 20's, the characteristics of the structure are potentially extensive applications in geometry and mechanics. In 2015 NASA researched out a tensegrity robot called SUPPERBall. This robot has been greatly improved compared to the previous tensigrity robot. However, they just focused on the design of the space structure of tensegrity robots to adapt more space constraints. The SUPPERBall robot uses the strings structure as the driving part, so the driving ability is limited. In this paper, a new tensegrity use the bar structure as the driving element and use the springs instead of string structure to make the whole robot have a good elastic performance and a good buffer in the condition of the impact force. This paper mainly does the following work. Firstly, according to relationship among nodes, connection matrix of the bars and the strings are built and then the mathematics model of tensegrity robot is obtained. Secondly, dynamics simulation of tensegrity robot is established in Adams software to analysis the movement locus of center of gravity and change in length of bars of tensegrity robot. Finally, it is proved that the application possibility of tensegrity theory used in the field of robot.