Wire Harness

The bundled, connectorized assembly of power and signal cables routed through a robot.

A wire harness bundles multiple power, communication, and encoder signal cables along a fixed path and fits connectors on both ends; it's used heavily in both cars and robots. A humanoid robot has dozens of joints, and each joint module needs power plus a connection to a bus such as EtherCAT or CAN. The cables have to pass through joints that keep rotating, and repeated bending and twisting wears them down, breaks conductors, or loosens contacts — a common source of whole-robot failures. So harness design has to account for routing path, bend radius, and how the cable is secured, and it's often paired with hollow-shaft routing (running the cable through a hole in the center of the joint) or a slip ring (letting the cable pass through a joint that spins without limit) to cut down on tangling. How the harness is laid out also affects how far a joint can rotate and how efficient the robot is to assemble.

ExampleA humanoid robot's arm harness usually runs through the hollow shaft at the center of each joint, all the way from the shoulder to the wrist and dexterous hand.

Also called

Cable Harness

Related

Hollow-Shaft Cable Routing · Slip Ring · Joint Actuator Module · EtherCAT (Ethernet for Control Automation Technology) · Controller Area Network (CAN)

Sources

Cable harness - Wikipedia