Journal
SOFT ROBOTICS
Volume 9, Issue 4, Pages 788-797Publisher
MARY ANN LIEBERT, INC
DOI: 10.1089/soro.2020.0165
Keywords
continuum robot; bionics design; layered drive; trajectory planning; special environment application
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Funding
- National Key R&D program of China [2019YFB1309600]
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [11802305, 51875281, 51861135306]
- China National Special Project for Magnetic Confinement Fusion Science Program [2017YFE0300503]
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This study presents the development of a snake-inspired continuum robot with underactuated continuum joints simulating the morphological skeleton structure of a snake body. The layered-drive principle reduces complexity significantly, and the rationality of the snake-inspired robot is verified through static and dynamic characteristics analysis.
Continuum robots with redundant degrees of freedom and postactuated devices are suitable for application in aerospace, nuclear facilities, and other narrow and multiobstacle special environments. The development of a snake-inspired continuum robot is presented in this study. The morphological skeleton structure of the snake body is simulated using underactuated continuum joints, which include several rigid-body joints in series. Each rigid-body joint is driven by the traction of a wire rope. Based on the layered-drive principle, angular synchronous motion can be realized in space with multiple rigid-body joints in a single continuous joint, which can considerably reduce the complexity of the inverse kinematics solution, terminal drive box, and control system. The static and dynamic characteristics of the snake-inspired robot are obtained through torque balance and an equivalent transformation. Finally, we demonstrate trajectory planning and load capacity testing in two robot prototypes with arm lengths of 1500 and 2300 mm (including two and four continuous joints, respectively). The rationality of the structure and the correctness of the control of the layered-drive snake-inspired robot are verified.
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