Abstract
Continuum robots have become a focus for extensive research, since they can work well in complex and confined environments. The main contribution of this paper is to establish a stiffness model of a single section multibackbone continuum robot and analyze the effect of the structural parameters of continuum robot on the overall rotation and translation stiffness. First, a stiffness model which indicates the end configuration of continuum robot under external load is deduced by the screw theory and Euler-Bernoulli beam. Then, the stiffness elements are fully analyzed, therefore, obtaining the influence of the structural parameters of continuum robot on the stiffness elements. Meanwhile, a numerical analysis of stiffness elements is given. Furthermore, the minimum and maximum rotation/translation stiffness are introduced to analyze the effect of the structural parameters of continuum robot on the overall rotation and translation stiffness. Finally, the experiments are used to validate the proposed stiffness model. The experimental results show that the proposed stiffness model of continuum robot is correct and the errors are less than 7%.
Highlights
Continuum robot is a new kind of bionic robot, inspired by elephant trunks and octopus tentacles
The main contribution is to propose a simplified method to establish the stiffness model of a single section multibackbone continuum robot, so as to obtain the relationship between force and deformation at the end of continuum
The stiffness model of continuum robot is established by means of the screw theory and Euler-Bernoulli beam
Summary
Continuum robot is a new kind of bionic robot, inspired by elephant trunks and octopus tentacles. Several different performance indices have been proposed for stiffness evaluation, including determinant of stiffness matrix, average stiffness, and minimum and maximum stiffness [30, 31]. We define the minimum and maximum rotation/translation stiffness, to evaluate the influence of the structural parameters of continuum robot on the rotation/translation stiffness of continuum robot. The main contribution is to present a method to establish the stiffness model of a single section multibackbone continuum robot based on screw theory and Euler-Bernoulli beam, as well as analyzing the effect of the structural parameters of continuum robot on the overall rotation and translation stiffness by the minimum and maximum rotation/translation stiffness.
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