High-accuracy snake arm with large load and long-distance radiation resistance

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-12318927-B2
Application number	US-202218693514-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Aug 19, 2022
Priority date	Sep 23, 2021
Publication date	Jun 3, 2025
Grant date	Jun 3, 2025

Abstract

The present invention provides a high-accuracy snake arm with large load and long-distance radiation resistance, which includes a driving base body and a snake shaped arm, where the snake shaped arm is composed of parallelly-connected joints connected in series, which includes a plurality of identical movable linkages connected in parallel, each of the parallelly-connected joints further includes platforms; when one of the platforms at the two ends of the plurality of identical movable linkages connected in parallel is fixed, the other platform performs translation motion along a circle relative to the fixed platform. The movable linkage includes at least a link; and a plurality of driving units are installed in the driving base body, each driving unit is respectively connected to each link in the parallelly-connected joint via a steel wire rope.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A high-accuracy snake arm with large load and long-distance radiation resistance, comprising a driving base body and a snake shaped arm, wherein one end of the snake shaped arm is connected to the driving base body, and the snake shaped arm is composed of parallelly-connected joints connected in series, which are respectively referred to as a first joint, a second joint, . . . , and an N th joint according to their distance from the driving base body, wherein N is an integer greater than or equal to 1;
each parallelly-connected joint comprises m identical movable linkages connected in parallel, and m is an integer greater than or equal to 3;
each of the parallelly-connected joints further comprises platforms respectively connected to each end of the m identical movable linkages connected in parallel; where one of the platforms at one end of the m identical movable linkages connected in parallel is fixed relative to another platform, the other platform performs translation motion along a circle relative to the fixed platform, two adjacent platforms remain to be parallel with each other; and the driving base body have a plurality of driving units installed therein, each driving unit is respectively connected to a respective link in the parallelly-connected joint via a steel wire rope, and each steel wire rope is connected to a respective link.

2. The high-accuracy snake arm with large load and long-distance radiation resistance according to claim 1 , wherein the movable linkage further comprises two universal joints, each universal joint mounted at each end of the link, and the link is connected to the platform via the universal joints.

3. The high-accuracy snake arm with large load and long-distance radiation resistance according to claim 1 , wherein each of the parallelly-connected joints is driven by m driving units, the total number of the driving units being m*N, the m driving units connected to the N th joint used as an N th group of driving units, and the driving units having N groups in total.

4. The high-accuracy snake arm with large load and long-distance radiation resistance according to claim 1 , wherein a first platform of the first joint is connected to the driving base body, a second platform of the first joint is connected to a first platform of the second joint, and a second platform of the second joint is connected to a first platform of the third joint; a second platform of the (N−1) th joint is connected to a first platform of the N th joint, wherein the second platform of the (N−1) th joint is fixedly connected to a platform of the N th joint to form a platplate (N−1); or
the second platform of the (N−1) th joint and a first platform of the N th joint are set as the same platplate (N−1).

5. The high-accuracy snake arm with large load and long-distance radiation resistance according to claim 1 , wherein the driving unit is composed of a linear module and a motor, wherein the linear module contains a lead screw and a sliding table, and the sliding table moves along the lead screw.

6. The high-accuracy snake arm with large load and long-distance radiation resistance according to claim 1 , wherein the number of the linear modules is m times the number of parallel joints in the snake arm, the same as the total number of links in all parallel joints.

7. The high-accuracy snake arm with large load and long-distance radiation resistance according to claim 1 , wherein the motor is a stepping motor with a brake or a decelerating stepping motor with a decelerator, the driving unit has a self-locking function, and the sliding table in the driving unit can immediately stop moving when the motor stalls or is power off.

8. The high-accuracy snake arm with large load and long-distance radiation resistance according to claim 1 , wherein each platform has a central through-hole in the center, and each platform has m steel wire rope through-holes evenly distributed along the circumference; a head end of a sleeve of each sleeve steel wire rope is connected to a base of the driving base body, a middle section of the sleeve steel wire rope passes through the central through-hole of each platform, and a tail end of the sleeve steel wire rope is connected to the steel wire rope through-hole of the corresponding platform; each platform is only connected to sleeves of m steel wire ropes driving the corresponding joints; after the sleeve steel wire rope passes through the steel wire rope through-hole, the tail end is connected to the link of the joint driven thereby; and the sleeve steel wire ropes driving other joints only pass through the central through-hole of the platform.

9. The high-accuracy snake arm with large load and long-distance radiation resistance according to claim 8 , wherein the links are named in sequence according to the serial number names of the parallelly-connected joints, the links of the first joint are respectively links 1_m, the links of the second joint are respectively links 2_1, 2_2, 2_3, . . . , 2_m, and the links of the N th joint are respectively links N_1, N_2, N_3, . . . , N_m, wherein the sleeve steel wire ropes are connected in such a manner that:
as for m sleeve steel wire ropes for driving the N th joint, head ends of the sleeves are connected to the base of the driving base body and tail ends are connected to m steel wire rope through-holes of the platform (N−1), the head ends of the steel wire rope thereof are connected to the N th group of driving units, the tail ends of the steel wire rope thereof are respectively connected to the links N_m of the N th joint, and the distance between the position where the steel wire rope and the link are connected and the platform (N−1) is L N , wherein L 1 , L 2 , . . . , L N are any constant values.

10. A method for operating a high-accuracy snake arm with large load and long-distance radiation resistance according to claim 1 ,
wherein a group of driving units connected to the N th joint move cooperatively to drive the N th joint to move to a corresponding position,
and each group of the driving units move cooperatively to realize the motion of the snake arm.

Assignees

• Univ Hunan

Inventors

• Jiang Chao
• Wang Zhao
• Tian Wanyi

Classifications

• B25J9/104

  with cables, chains or ribbons · CPC title

• B25J9/0078 Primary

  actuated by cables · CPC title

• B25J9/0075

  Truss · CPC title

• B25J9/06

  characterised by multi-articulated arms · CPC title

• B25J9/065 Primary

  Snake robots · CPC title