Robotic manipulators, traditionally designed with classical joint-link articulated structures, excel in industrial applications but face challenges in human-centered and general-purpose tasks requiring greater dexterity and adaptability. Addressing these limitations, we introduce the Prismatic-Bending Transformable (PBT) Joint, a novel design inspired by the scissors mechanism, enabling transformable kinematic chains. Each PBT joint module provides three degrees of freedom-bending, rotation, and elongation/contraction-allowing scalable and reconfigurable assemblies to form diverse kinematic configurations tailored to specific tasks. This innovative design surpasses conventional systems, delivering superior flexibility and performance across various applications. We present the design, modeling, and experimental validation of the PBT joint, demonstrating its integration into modular and foldable robotic arms. The PBT joint functions as a single SKU, enabling manipulators to be constructed entirely from standardized PBT joints without additional customized components. It also serves as a modular extension for existing systems, such as wrist modules, streamlining design, deployment, transportation, and maintenance. Three sizes-large, medium, and small-have been developed and integrated into robotic manipulators, highlighting their enhanced dexterity, reachability, and adaptability for manipulation tasks. This work represents a significant advancement in robotic design, offering scalable and efficient solutions for dynamic and unstructured environments.

Modular reconfigurable manipulators enable quick adaptation and versatility to address different application environments and tailor to the specific requirements of the tasks. Task performance significantly depends on the manipulator's mounted pose and morphology design, therefore posing the need of methodologies for selecting suitable modular robot configurations and mounted pose that can address the specific task requirements and required performance. Morphological changes in modular robots can be derived through a discrete optimization process involving the selective addition or removal of modules. In contrast, the adjustment of the mounted pose operates within a continuous space, allowing for smooth and precise alterations in both orientation and position. This work introduces a computational framework that simultaneously optimizes modular manipulators' mounted pose and morphology. The core of the work is that we design a mapping function that \textit{implicitly} captures the morphological state of manipulators in the continuous space. This transformation function unifies the optimization of mounted pose and morphology within a continuous space. Furthermore, our optimization framework incorporates a array of performance metrics, such as minimum joint effort and maximum manipulability, and considerations for trajectory execution error and physical and safety constraints. To highlight our method's benefits, we compare it with previous methods that framed such problem as a combinatorial optimization problem and demonstrate its practicality in selecting the modular robot configuration for executing a drilling task with the CONCERT modular robotic platform.

Origami structures have been widely explored in robotics due to their many potential advantages. Origami robots can be very compact, as well as cheap and efficient to produce. In particular, they can be constructed in a flat format using modern manufacturing techniques. Rotational motion is essential for robotics, and a variety of origami rotational joints have been proposed in the literature. However, few of these are even approximately flat-foldable. One potential enabler of flat origami rotational joints is the inclusion of lightweight pneumatic pouches which actuate the origami's folds; however, pouch actuators only enable a relatively small amount of rotational displacement. The previously proposed Four-Vertex Origami is a flat-foldable structure which provides an angular multiplier for a pouch actuator, but suffers from a degenerate state. This paper presents a novel rigid origami, the Self-Lock Origami, which eliminates this degeneracy by slightly relaxing the assumption of flat-foldability. This joint is analysed in terms of a trade-off between the angular multiplier and the mechanical advantage. Furthermore, the Self-Lock Origami is a modular joint which can be connected to similar or different joints to produce complex movements for various applications; three different manipulator designs are introduced as a proof of concept.