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This paper presents a new teleoperated spherical tensegrity robot capable of performing locomotion on steep inclined surfaces. With a novel control scheme centered around the simultaneous actuation of multiple cables, the robot demonstrates robust climbing on inclined surfaces in hardware experiments and speeds significantly faster than previous spherical tensegrity models. This robot is an improvement over other iterations in the TT-series and the first tensegrity to achieve reliable locomotion on inclined surfaces of up to 24 • . We analyze locomotion in simulation and hardware under single and multicable actuation, and introduce two novel multi-cable actuation policies, suited for steep incline climbing and speed, respectively. We propose compelling justifications for the increased dynamic ability of the robot and motivate development of optimization algorithms able to take advantage of the robot's increased control authority.

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We propose and describe two novel force-feedback actuation systems to support accurate robot-mediated wrist motor protocols during fMRI: a co-located actuation approach and a remote actuation system based on a plastic cable-conduit transmission. To decouple the load from the non-linearities of the actuators/transmission and to enable force feedback, in both systems we include physical compliance and additional position and force sensing capabilities. Through a detailed description of the actuators design, we show how the choice between colocated and non co-located actuation influences the design of a wrist exoskeleton, to be used for robot-mediated protocols during fMRI, resulting in a parallel robot design and in a serial robot design respectively.

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