Design and experiments with a 30 DOF robot

A 30 degree-of-freedom (DOF) planar hyper-redundant manipulator is constructed in order to validate and demonstrate the authors' previous work on a framework for hyper-redundant robot kinematic analysis and algorithm development. The implementation of this robot is reviewed, and experimental work in hyper-redundant manipulation, obstacle avoidance, and locomotion is summarized. Potential benefits of high-DOF manipulators include superior obstacle avoidance ability, increased robustness with respect to mechanical failure, and the ability to perform new forms of robot locomotion and grasping.