Development of a 6 DOF manipulator for a mobile robot

International competitions such as the European Rover Challenge aim to attract young professionals to aerospace and robotics. Against this background, the Frankfurt Robotics Science Team has developed a mobile robot platform called ARES. It is equipped with different modules to interact with its environment and to analyse it. The manipulator is a key module of the ARES rover. This paper details the manipulator of ARES and describes the changes in comparison to the previous work of the Frankfurt Robotics Science Team. The modifications lead to a reduction of the dead weight by 40,7 % with a simultaneous increase in the payload from 4 kg to 43.78 kg.