A gearbox for high-speed ratios used for tele-operated biomedical applications such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)

A gearbox system for high-speed ratios was employed in the deployable retrievable boom of the Shuttle’s tethered satellite TSS-1 in 1990. A company called STAM produced a motor gearbox made of nonmagnetic materials to be used as a robotic manipulator for tele-operated biomedical applications such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which involves a high-density magnetic field. The gearbox has a rotation speed reduction factor of 3000 in the presence of a very high-density magnetic field (3 Tesla). This SPACEGEAR design has a simple configuration with low production costs, avoiding the use of high-strength gear material and with high-torque transmittal capacity. It has also been adapted to an MRI-compatible robotic manipulator developed by FeBo srl for tele-operations.