Curiosity's Robotic Arm
This
engineering drawing shows the location of the arm on NASA's Curiosity
rover, in addition to the arm's turret, which holds two instruments and
three tools. The arm places and holds turret-mounted tools on rock and
soil targets. It also manipulates the sample-processing mechanisms on
the 66-pound (30-kilogram) turret.
The arm has five degrees of
freedom of movement provided by rotary actuators known as the shoulder
azimuth joint, shoulder elevation joint, elbow joint, wrist joint and
turret joint.