Abstract
With the advent of automation and robotic systems, robotic manipulators are becoming increasingly popular in various industries. This project aims to investigate stiffness varying technology for a class of flexible manipulators with the aim of online changing manipulator stiffness. We propose and develop a stiffness varying mechanism based on Polycaprolactone (PCL), characterize it and test out together with extensive experiments. This mainly involves design improvement, modeling, characterization and hands-on experiments.
