| 摘要 |
A robot arm has a compound joint 5 or a revolute joint (503 fig. 13) between a first, proximal limb 310 and a second, distal limb 311, a torque sensor 150, 191 for sensing torque about the joint, a control unit (10 fig. 1) for controlling the operation of the arm, a communications unit 250 borne by the arm distally of the joint and capable of encoding data received from the torque sensor 150, 191 in a first data format into data packets and transmitting those packets to the control unit (10 fig. 1) in accordance with a packet-based data protocol different from the first data format, the torque sensor 150, 191 being connected by a physical data link running within an exterior wall of the second limb 311 to the communications unit 250 so as to pass data representing sensed torque about the joint to the communications unit 250 for encoding. The compound joint 5 may comprise a coupler element (28 fig. 3) coupled to the first and second limbs 310, 311 by first and second revolute joints. First and second rotational position sensors 202, 212 may sense the configuration of the arm about the first and second joints and first and second torque sensors 150, 191 may sense the torque applied about the first and second joints. A further communications unit 195 may be borne by the arm proximally of the coupler, also capable of encoding data received from one or more of the position and/or torque sensors in a similar manner to communications unit 250. The first position sensor may be connected to the further communications unit 195 by a physical data link running within an exterior wall of the first limb 310. The cables between the sensors 150, 191, 202, 212 and communications units 195, 250 do not cross the joint, only data bus 196 crosses the joint. |
