Continuous Cable Tensegrity
By replacing individual cables with a single continuous cable we are able to more easily cause changes in shape and stiffness throughout the entire structure with minimal actuators.
Tensegrity structures are increasingly being used in robotics because of their high strength to weight ratio and their ability to distribute forces throughout the entire structure. Understanding the shape of the structure and how forces are distributed is essential for control, effective design, and use of tensegrity structures in robotics applications, but because of how they distribute the forces throughout, it deforms the structure in complicated ways.
We are starting by limiting our research to 2D tensegrities so we can simplify the design and the math needed to describe the structure. If the cells are small enough, we can treat them individually acting in 2D even though they are part of a larger 3D structure.
We are starting by limiting our research to 2D tensegrities so we can simplify the design and the math needed to describe the structure. If the cells are small enough, we can treat them individually acting in 2D even though they are part of a larger 3D structure.
Model & Simulation
We are developing a package in python to model and simulate these tensegrity structures. The current public release is available at https://github.com/BYU-SMASH-IT-Lab/2D-TENSEGRITY-SIM. The simulation reads in a configuration file containing the tensegrity structure setup and allows the user to simulate controlling strings with motors.
Prototyping and Testing
Currently the prototyping and testing is shared with the tensegrisleeve project, and includes the development of novel TPU nodes.