Spreadbands drive parallel robots

Describes the design principles of spreadband devices, made up of tapes such as are commonly employed in tape measures; and shows how they can be controlled and applied to parallel robots. A grooved mandrel contains the coiled tape and permits a very low friction and zero backlash movement to be obtained. The curvature of the tape provides compression and bending stiffness, and multiple tapes can be combined to create low mass rigid structures with very large working envelopes and very small retracted sizes.