Experimental Demonstrations of a New Design Paradigm in Space Robotics.

This paper presents a study to experimentally evaluate a new design paradigm for robotic components, with emphasis on space robotics applications. In this design paradigm, robotic components are made from embedded binary actuators and compliant mechanisms in order to reduce weight and complexity. This paper presents a series of five experiments that demonstrate the concept. These studies include a reconfigurable rocker suspension for rocker-bogie rovers, a sample acquisition gripper, a pantograph mechanism for robotic legs, an articulated binary limb, and a hyper-degree-of-freedom mechanism building block. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]