Abstract
This article presents a geometric approach for path planning of serpentine manipulator for real-time control in confined spaces. Firstly, the mechanical design of a serpentine manipulator is introduced, and its kinematics is analyzed. As the serpentine manipulator usually has more than 10 degrees of freedom, the motion control and obstacle avoidance are difficult considering its inverse kinematics. Follow-the-leader is an ideal path planning method for serpentine manipulator, as the manipulator moves forward, all the sections follow the path that the tip of manipulator has passed, which simplifies the obstacle avoidance. The realization of follow-the-leader method is to find the new configurations of the manipulator that can fit the ideal path with small errors. In this article, a novel geometric approach for follow-the-leader motion is proposed to solve new configurations with high precision of location and less computation time. The method is validated through simulation and the deviation from the ideal path is analyzed, simulation results show that calculation time for per step is less than 0.5 ms for a serpentine manipulator with 10 sections. To verify the follow-the-leader method, a 13-degree-of-freedom serpentine manipulator system with 6 sections was built, and 12 magnetic rotary encoders were embedded into the universal joints to collect data of rotation angles of each section. Experimental results show that the manipulator can carry out follow-the-leader motion as expected in real time.
Highlights
To solve the problem that the traditional robot is difficult to carry out high-efficiency operation in confined space, serpentine manipulator is developed
The errors analyzed in the simulation in the “Simulation trials and results” section are the inherent errors of the follow-the-leader method, when the maximum bending angle is p/6 and the length of section is 185 mm, the maximum deviation from the ideal path is 24.8 mm
According to the analysis in the “Comparison of different follow-the-leader methods” section, there is no theoretical error for the tip position when using the follow-the-leader method, the actual error for the tip position is less than 12 mm during the path following process
Summary
To solve the problem that the traditional robot is difficult to carry out high-efficiency operation in confined space, serpentine manipulator is developed. The serpentine manipulator has a strong obstacle avoidance capability, making it suitable for use as a special robot, which can enter the enclosed space through small holes or cracks, carries out operations, laser cutting or repair work. In this field, since the term hyper-redundant was coined by Chirikjian and Burdick in 1991,1 many designs of serpentine manipulator system have been put forward by different research teams. Since the term hyper-redundant was coined by Chirikjian and Burdick in 1991,1 many designs of serpentine manipulator system have been put forward by different research teams They can be divided into two categories, rigid structure serpentine manipulator and. Festo pneumatic components company[8] in Germany launched a flexible pneumatic continuum manipulator, the flexibility of the gripper arm allows direct human–machine contact, and a large number of commonly used medical devices such as catheters and colonoscopes can be considered continuum manipulator.[9]
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