Simulation of Spatial Inspection with Arm-Z – the Extremely Modular Hyper-Redundant Manipulator

Arm-Z is a concept of a hyper-redundant robotic manipulator composed of congruent modules with one degree of freedom (1-DOF) each. The end-effector of Arm-Z is capable of performing any movements in the workspace. The two main advantages of Arm-Z are: economic (due to the potential mass production of the modules) and robustness (since the broken modules can be easily replaced). On the other hand, controlling such a highly non-linear system is much more difficult than a typical industrial manipulator and requires the use of appropriate optimization techniques. This paper presents the preliminary results of the implementation of an algorithm based on the simple gradient method for finding the transition trajectory between the given states of Arm-Z. An example task for the manipulator is presented: Arm-Z is to safely enter the workspace, inspect the five points given, and safely leave the workspace. This experiment is a three-dimensional version of the previously implemented two-dimensional inspection.