Tendon transmissions reduce distal inertia and add compliance, yet routing, slack, and friction govern motion and force transfer. Mainstream rigid-body robotics simulators such as MuJoCo do not jointly resolve moving noncircular contact, unilateral tension, and segment friction. We present MuJoCable, which adds a reduced-order, configuration-dependent cable transmission to MuJoCo. Its routing algorithm jointly optimizes an ordered path across moving analytic and mesh surfaces. A unilateral axial law, directional Capstan propagation, and nodal virtual work map this path to segment tensions and body forces. The warm-started engine plugin applies these forces during simulation and exposes route and load states for design. Pulley benchmarks recover analytical transmission relations with a Capstan-ratio error below 0.5%. On the underactuated 18-joint SpiRobs, MuJoCable reveals friction-driven load growth and proximal redistribution of joint rotation that the native tendon does not represent. Hardware tests on SpiRobs and a tendon-route-coupled finger reproduce observed motion sequences. By making physical threading executable, MuJoCable brings transmission sources of the simulation-to-reality gap into route, cable, and actuator design before fabrication.
Many planning and control tasks for tendon-driven continuum robots (TDCRs) require the complete Cartesian backbone geometry. We present a reduced Cartesian framework for planar, axially compressible TDCRs that propagates equilibrium configurations along prescribed tendon-force and tendon-displacement trajectories. The...
Ke Wu, Fang-Ju Yang, Xiao-Hui Zhang et al.· 0 citations
The inherent compliance of cable-driven continuum robots (CDCRs) enables safe interaction but often degrades manipulation accuracy and payload capacity. To address this trade-off, this article proposes a novel variable stiffness control (VSC) framework that exploits actuation redundancy for stiffness regulation. Unlike...
Tao-Wen Guo, Chen Zhao, Xin-Liang Li et al.· IEEE Transactions on Automat...· 0 citations
Underactuated tendon-driven hands offer compact actuation and passive compliance, but tendon elongation under restoring-spring loading introduces configuration-dependent joint deviations. This paper presents H-PAC, a modular 6-actuator, 15-DoF robotic hand with a control-oriented modeling and implementation framework....
Teng-Fei Yan, Jiong-Xu Chen, Teng Wang et al.· 0 citations
Forward kinetostatics of spatial tendon-driven continuum robots typically requires a nonlinear equilibrium solve for each actuation input. This paper develops a force-to-Cartesian-configuration model with a closed-form solution in quadratures for spatial multi-segment robots under tendon actuation. The Cartesian backbo...
Ke Wu, Fang-Ju Yang, Xiao-Hui Zhang et al.· 0 citations
Shape and force sensing have long been critical bottlenecks in the development of compact capstan-driven continuum surgical robots, primarily due to the difficulty of obtaining cable tension information within the confined capstan assembly. To overcome these challenges, this paper presents an integrated design-modeling...
Gang Zhang, Yufu Qiu, Junyan Yan et al.· 0 citations
A hierarchical whole-body tracking framework for the 28-DoF Droid X3 that separates high-level motion learning from transmission compensation is presented and the aggregate action-completion rate is increased across the complete physical trials, an increase of 11 percentage points.
Wen-Cong Gan, Jie-Hui Chen, Qing-Du Li et al.· Biomimetics· 0 citations
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