Part

Robot arm (manipulator)

You might say: robot arms, robotic arm, manipulator arm, articulated arm, snake-like arm

A robot arm positions a tool or hand through a moving structure. It can bend at discrete joints, along a continuous backbone, or through a hybrid of both.

What it does

Moves the end effector within its workspace, the set of end-effector configurations it can reach regardless of a particular task.

Ask

Does the task need a few elbow-like joints, a many-jointed snake, or a continuously bending arm?

Trouble

A ribbed silhouette alone does not identify the mechanism inside. Choose the movement and load requirements before copying the outer shape.

Parts

• Arm architecture: Arm architecture describes where an arm bends.
• Tendon drive: A tendon drive sends tension members from motors or winches, often mounted at the base, through guides to anchors along a link chain or compliant backbone.
• Arm shell: A shell is the arm's outer cover: a ribbed sleeve or bellows can protect and style a mechanism while the internal structure carries the load.
• Arm prototyping: Arm prototyping turns a desired gesture, payload and reach into a sequence of mockups and guarded hardware tests.

Connections

• See also: End effector
• See also: Workspace and payload
• See also: Degrees of freedom
• See also: Kinematics
• See also: Actuators
• See also: Safety

Sources

1. Jessica Burgner-Kahrs, Continuum Robotics 101, Introduction; DefinitionThe boundary that separates continuum robots from other snake-like or hyper-redundant manipulators is sometimes obscured by manipulator designs that use continuously bending elastic elements along with conventional discrete joints in the same structure.
2. Kevin M. Lynch and Frank C. Park, Modern Robotics video supplement: Task Space and Workspace, Video transcriptThe workspace is a specification of the configurations that the end-effector of the robot can reach, and has nothing to do with a particular task.

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