Tendon-Driven Actuation

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Overview

Tendon-driven actuation studies how routed cables transmit motor forces to robot joints and flexible bodies, enabling lightweight hands, continuum robots, catheters, and wearable exoskeletons. Researchers combine mechanical models of tendon routing, friction, elasticity, and backbone deformation with data-driven dynamics models, force estimation, and controllers such as model-predictive control and reinforcement learning. Evaluation spans hand grasping and fingertip-force tests, continuum-robot shape tracking and collision avoidance, catheter navigation, and exoskeleton tasks. A central challenge is achieving reliable force and shape control despite friction, hysteresis, changing cable paths, and loads, while balancing compliance and dexterity against strength, sensing, and model complexity.

Latest papers

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42 papers6 papers in the last four weeks, down 25% on the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

  1. Adaptive Bendpoint Formation in Octopus-Inspired Soft Continuum Arms

    Oct 18, 2026Jessica Gumowski, Julian Finn, Krishna Manaswi Digumarti +1Continuum Robot DesignSoft Robotics

    Centre for Robotics, Queensland University of Technology, Brisane, 4000 QLD, Australia. · School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics, Queensland University of Technology, Brisane, 4000 QLD, Australia. · CSIRO Robotics, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Pullenvale, QLD 4069, Australia. +1

  2. An Open MuJoCo Simulation Framework for a Quadrotor Carrying a Tendon-Driven Soft Continuum Arm

    Oct 11, 2026Haitham El-HussienyAerial ManipulationRobotics Simulation

    Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology (E-JUST), Alexandria, Egypt

  3. Design of a Fully Actuated 4-DOF Robotic Finger With Joint-Specific Hybrid Remote Actuation

    Oct 7, 2026Hyojae Kang, Hyun-mok Jung, Joonho Lee +4Robotic Hand DesignTendon-Driven Actuation

    Advanced Robotics Research Center, Korea Institute of Machinery & Materials (KIMM) · Mechanical Engineering, University of Science & Technology (UST)

  4. Design optimization of tendon-driven robots considering tendon wrapping and shortcut

    Oct 7, 2026Yuta Sahara, Kento Kawaharazuka, Kei OkadaTendon-Driven Actuation

    Department of Mechano-Informatics, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-8656, Japan. · AI Center, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo, Japan.

  5. Closed-Form Cartesian Forward Kinetostatics for Spatial Multi-Segment Tendon-Driven Continuum Robots

    Sep 29, 2026Ke Wu, Fangju Yang, Xiaohui Zhang +4RoboticsContinuum Robot Control

  6. Design and Validation of an Antagonistic Tendon-Driven Dexterous Robotic Hand with Bidirectional Operation

    Sep 28, 2026Chunghyeon Lee, Hyukjun Kwon, Sungeon Kim +2Robotic Hand DesignRobotic Grasping

    Department of Mechanical Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA · Department of Mechanical Engineering, Sogang University, Seoul 04107, South Korea

  7. Reduced Cartesian Kinetostatics for Tendon-Driven Continuum Robots: Residual-Stabilized Full-Shape Propagation

    Sep 24, 2026Ke Wu, Fangju Yang, Xiaohui Zhang +3Continuum Robot Shape EstimationContinuum Robot Control

  8. A Tendon-Driven Robotic Jellyfish with Constrained Soft Actuation and Depth Control via Reinforcement Learning

    Sep 24, 2026Jiarui Peng, Yutong Wu, Zelong Wang +5Underwater RoboticsTendon-Driven Actuation

    Hong Kong Embodied AI Lab, Hong Kong SAR, China · The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China · The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong SAR, China

  9. Shaft-Configuration-Adaptive Catheter Tip Position Estimation via Motor-History Conditioned Residual Learning

    Sep 22, 2026Peihan Zhang, Michael C. Yip, Ankur Kapoor +1Residual LearningRobotics

    Digital Technology & Innovation, Siemens Healthineers, Princeton, NJ, USA. · Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California San Diego, United States.

  10. Real-Time Whole-Body Safe Motion Generation for Multi-Segment Tendon-Driven Continuum Robots

    Sep 22, 2026Fangju Yang, Siyi Ma, Tonghao Guan +5Robot Motion GenerationContinuum Robot Control

  11. History-Conditioned Flow Matching for Probabilistic Dynamics of Tendon-Driven Continuum Robots

    Sep 22, 2026Hang Yang, Tingcong Liu, Junjie Xiong +2Flow MatchingRobot Dynamics Learning

  12. A Reconfigurable Bidirectional Cable-Driven Hip Exoskeleton with Swappable Bench/Backpack Dual-configuration Actuation

    Sep 22, 2026YuanLong Ji, Shuhan Xiang, Qihan Ye +1RoboticsAssistive Robotics

    School of Biological Science and Medical Engineering, Beihang University; the Key Laboratory of Biomechanics and Mechanobiology (Beihang University), Ministry of Education; Key Laboratory of Innovation and Transformation of Advanced Medical Devices, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology; National Medical Innovation Platform for Industry-Education Integration in Advanced Medical Devices (Interdiscipline of Medicine and Engineering), Beihang University, Beijing, 100191, China

  13. Design and Control of a Cable-Driven Switchable Actuator with Torque/Tension Dual Modes for Exoskeletons

    Sep 20, 2026YuanLong Ji, Xu Liu, Xinyuan Cai +8Robotic ControlRobotics

    School of Biological Science and Medical Engineering, Beihang University; the Key Laboratory of Biomechanics and Mechanobiology (Beihang University), Ministry of Education; Key Laboratory of Innovation and Transformation of Advanced Medical Devices, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology; National Medical Innovation Platform for Industry-Education Integration in Advanced Medical Devices (Interdiscipline of Medicine and Engineering), Beihang University, Beijing, 100191, China · School of Engineering Medicine, Beihang University, Beijing, 100191, China · School of Physics and Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Longyan University, Longyan, 364012, China

  14. MuJoCable: Reduced-Order Surface-Routed Cable Transmission for Tendon-Driven Robots

    Sep 9, 2026Yi Zhang, Qi Shao, Yicong Lin +3Robotics SimulationRobotics

  15. Aero Hand Open: A Simulation-Ready Tendon-Driven Hand for Dexterous Manipulation Learning

    Aug 28, 2026Nan Wang, Mohit Yadav, Jonathan Wulff +5Robotic Hand DesignRobotics Simulation

    Chestnut Robotics

  16. A Tendon-Driven Five-Fingered Hand with Distributed Tactile Perception for Dexterous Manipulation

    Aug 26, 2026Huayang Chen, Longhui QinRobotic Hand DesignDexterous Manipulation

    School of Mechanical Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, China

  17. H-PAC Hand: Control-Oriented Modeling and Tendon-Elasticity Compensation for an Underactuated Robotic Hand

    Aug 17, 2026Teng Yan, Jiongxu Chen, Teng Wang +5Robotic Hand DesignTendon-Driven Actuation

    The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), Guangzhou, China · Southeast University, Nanjing, China

  18. Rotate Disks to Reach Farther: Design and Modeling of a Novel Reconfigurable Tendon Driven Manipulator

    Aug 16, 2026Sabyasachi Dash, Yangkun Liu, Will Hunter +2Continuum Robot DesignTendon-Driven Actuation

    Department of Industrial & Enterprise Systems Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign · Department of Mechanical Science & Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  19. A Disturbance in the Force: Force Actuation on the RAVEN II Surgical Robot with Parallel Motor-Cable Units

    Aug 6, 2026Haonan Peng, Dun-Tin Chiang, Jordan Hendricks +5RoboticsTendon-Driven Actuation

    University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA · Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA 01075, USA

  20. Modular Robotic Catheters for Endovascular Aneurysm Repair

    Jul 28, 2026Alex Ranne, Jinshi Zhao, Ali Anil Demircali +5Robotic Endovascular InterventionTendon-Driven Actuation

    Hamlyn Centre for Robotic Surgery, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Imperial College London, SW7 2AZ, UK · Department of Metabolism, Digestion and Reproduction, Imperial College London, SW7 2AZ, UK · Department of Mechanical Engineering, Bursa Uludag University, 16059, Bursa, Turkey +1

  21. Development of a Handheld Actuation Mechanism for a Tendon-driven Robotically Steered Guidewire

    Jul 27, 2026Saima Chavenet, Timothy A. Brumfiel, Revanth Konda +1Robotic Endovascular InterventionRobotics

    Medical Robotics and Automation (Robomed) Laboratory · Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology

  22. Friction Characterization of a Cable-Driven Differential Actuation System for Lower-Limb Exoskeletons

    Jun 14, 2026Alberto Maria Nobili, Fabio Salsedo, Alessandro FilippeschiMechanism DesignUpper-Limb Exoskeletons

    Institute of Mechanical Intelligence and with the Department of Excellence in Robotics and AI, Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy · Wearable Robotics s.r.l., Pisa, Italy

  23. WiXus: A Wheeled-Legged Robot with Wire-Driven Environmental Utilizing to Integrate Mobility and Manipulation

    May 20, 2026Shintaro Inoue, Kento Kawaharazuka, Temma Suzuki +2Legged RoboticsRobotics

    Department of Mechano-Informatics, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-8656, Japan

  24. Neural Operators for Design-Space Surrogate Modeling of Tendon-Actuated Continuum Robots

    May 18, 2026Branden Frieden, James M. Ferguson, Alan Kuntz +1Tendon-Driven ActuationFourier Neural Operator

    The Robotics Center and the Kahlert School of Computing at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA. · The Departments of Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, 37203, USA.

  25. Data-Driven Dynamic Modeling of a Tendon-Actuated Continuum Robot

    May 18, 2026Harald Minde Hansen, Bjørn Kåre Sæbø, Kristin Y. Pettersen +2Robot Dynamics IdentificationNonlinear System Identification

    European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Switzerland · Department of Engineering Cybernetics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NTNU, NO-7491 Trondheim, Norway

  26. SSTL: Self-Sensing Tendon Loop for Hysteresis Modeling and Compensation in Tendon-Sheath Mechanisms

    May 16, 2026Myeongbo Park, Junhyun Park, Ihsan Ullah +2Robotic ControlMechanism Design

    Department of Robotics and Mechatronics Engineering, DGIST, Daegu, Republic of Korea · AI Research Lab, DEEPNOID, Seoul, Republic of Korea

  27. Continuum Robot Modeling with Action Conditioned Flow Matching

    May 9, 2026Jiong Lin, Jinchen Ruan, Hod Lipson3D Shape GenerationPoint Cloud Generation

    Department of Mechanical Engineering, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

  28. Reference-Augmented Learning for Precise Tracking Policy of Tendon-Driven Continuum Robots

    Apr 28, 2026Ziqing Zou, Ke Qiu, Haojian Lu +2Robot Trajectory TrackingRobot Policy Learning

    Department of Control Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

  29. Learning-Based Dynamics Modeling and Robust Control for Tendon-Driven Continuum Robots

    Apr 28, 2026Ziqing Zou, Ke Qiu, Fei Wang +3Gated Recurrent UnitRobot Trajectory Tracking

    Department of Control Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

  30. A Tendon-Driven Wrist Abduction-Adduction Joint Improves Performance of a 5 DoF Upper Limb Exoskeleton -- Implementation and Experimental Evaluation

    Apr 21, 2026Juwairiya S. Khan, Mostafa Mohammadi, Alexander L. Ammitzbøll +8Upper-Limb ExoskeletonsAssistive Robotics

    Neurorehabilitation Robotics and Engineering research group, Center for Rehabilitation Robotics, Department of Health Science and Technology, Aalborg University, Gistrup, Denmark · Department of Materials and Production, Aalborg University, Aalborg East, Denmark · Spinal Cord Injury Centre of Western Denmark, Regional Hospital of Viborg Denmark +3