Deployable plates made from stable-element class 1 tensegrity Conference Paper uri icon

abstract

  • One of the main properties of tensegrity structures, that sets them apart from most of structures, is that they are vary suitable for shape control. This can be accomplished by controlling lengths of string members. Tensegrity deployment is considered herein as a tracking control problem. Therefore, the required trajectories should be feasible for a given structure. For tensegrity structures, this means that in every desired configuration, the structure has to satisfy tensegrity conditions, which require strings to be in tension, and the structure to be stable. To define an open-loop deployment control law, geometry parameterization of those configurations and corresponding rest lengths of string elements guaranteeing equilibrium are defined first. By slowly varying desired geometry, an open-loop string rest length control is defined. This makes the structure track trajectories defined by the time dependent geometry parameters. Two examples are illustrated: 1) Deployment of planar tensegrity beams made of symmetric stable tensegrity units, 2) Deployment of plates made of stable symmetric shell class tensegrity units.

name of conference

  • Smart Structures and Materials 2002: Industrial and Commercial Applications of Smart Structures Technologies

published proceedings

  • Proceedings of SPIE

author list (cited authors)

  • Masic, M., & Skelton, R. T.

citation count

  • 7

complete list of authors

  • Masic, Milenko||Skelton, Robert T

editor list (cited editors)

  • McGowan, A.

publication date

  • July 2002