A Novel Underactuated Continuum Robot With Shape Memory Alloy Clutches

Bishop, Christopher; Russo, Matteo; Dong, Xin; Axinte, Dragos

doi:10.1109/tmech.2022.3179812

Cited by 30 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…Mechanical Design: A continuum robot can tune its stiffness by varying its diameter with a reconfigurable mechanism; [75] locking tendons along the backbone; [76] integrating a movable stiffer element into the backbone; [77,78] or exploiting an anisotropic distribution of the flexural stiffness of the structure. [79]…”

Section: Stiffening Solutionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Continuum Robots: An Overview

Russo

Sadati

Dong

et al. 2023

Advanced Intelligent Systems

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When thinking of robots, the image that immediately springs to mind is either an android, designed to resemble human beings and mimic their behavior, or an industrial manipulator, for example, a large machine of rigid steel working in an assembly line. However, robotic systems of multiple forms have been developed to carry out the most diverse tasks, with designs that evolved from readily available structures, such as vehicles, or inspired by nature. In the last decade, more and more bioinspired designs have been enabled by advances in computer science, materials, and manufacturing. Among them, continuum robots, inspired by snakes, trunks, and tendrils, are characterized by a compliant backbone capable of continuous bending, whose shape (configuration, i.e., position and orientation along the backbone curve) is controlled by applying loads through onboard "intrinsic" actuators (e.g., pneumatics or hydraulics) or transmission elements (e.g., tendons, rods, or compliant tubes) that are pushed/pulled from an extremity of the backbone ("extrinsic actuation"). These robots have flexible bodies with a high length to cross-section diameter ratio and are uniquely suited to tasks that require the deployment of tools or sensors with a long reach into tortuous and narrow paths. [1] Continuum robots were first developed in the 1960s [2] and rose to prominence in the late 1990s, [3] when they were often called elephant trunk, [4] tentacle/tendril, [5] or flexible [6] manipulators. Whereas other robots were characterized by intrinsic actuation and larger sizes, research on continuum robots first focused on miniaturization for medical applications, [7,8] leading to extrinsic actuation to enable leaner designs. Recently, continuum robots have been developed for a wider range of applications, including manufacturing, aerospace, search and rescue, and nuclear. In such scenarios, the infinite degrees of freedom (DoFs) of these slender robots enable inspection and intervention in areas that cannot be accessed by conventional robots (e.g., tunnels [9] and gas turbines [10] ).An exhaustive literature search (see Appendix) outlines a surging interest in continuum robots, with a 19.6% average annual growth in publications between 2012 and 2021 (continuum robot search on Web of Science). Three main topics can be observed in recent literature surveys, listed in Table 1. DesignTendon-driven and concentric tube robots are predominant in surveys, but they are not the only design solutions. [18] This richer literature can be attributed to intense research effort toward medical and other small-scale applications when compared to larger-scale tasks (e.g., manipulation) where intrinsic actuation is advantageous.

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Section: Stiffening Solutionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Continuum Robots: An Overview

Russo

Sadati

Dong

et al. 2023

Advanced Intelligent Systems

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“…Continuum robot is a new type of bionic robot, inspired by the natural organisms, which could attune to the sophisticated environments, such as the aircraft assembly, nuclear reactor maintenance, minimally invasive surgery, and so on [1][2][3]. With the increasing requirements for high precision, safety, and stability, the trajectory tracking control of the continuum robots has always been a topic of the latest research.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adaptive Approximation Sliding-Mode Control of an Uncertain Continuum Robot with Input Nonlinearities and Disturbances

2024

Applied Bionics and Biomechanics

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This paper develops an adaptive nonsingular fast terminal sliding-mode control (ANFTSMC) scheme for the continuum robot subjected to uncertain dynamics, external disturbances, and input nonlinearities (e.g., actuator deadzones/faults). Concretely, a function approximation technique (FAT) is utilized to estimate unknown robot dynamics and actuator deadzones/faults online. Furthermore, a disturbance observer (DO) is devised to make up for unknown external disturbances. Then, an ANFTSMC scheme combined with FAT and DO is developed, to expedite the restoration of the stability for the continuum robot. The proposed ANFTSMC not only can retain the benefits of traditional terminal sliding-mode control (TSMC), containing easy enforcement, quick response, and robustness to uncertainties but also dispose of the latent singularity for traditional faster TSMC designs. Afterward, the simulation results show that the proposed controller can effectively improve the trajectory tracking accuracy of the continuum robot, and the tracking root-mean-square errors are 0.0115 and 0.0128 rad. Finally, the effectiveness of ANFTSMC scheme is validated by experiments.

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“…A wide range of designs have been proposed for continuum robots, varying both in backbone architecture and in actuation principle [ 2 ]. Successful architectures include robots with a single central backbone [ 8 , 9 ] or a segmented backbone with rigid disks connected by compliant joints (e.g., spring-like [ 10 , 11 ] or twin-pivot [ 4 , 12 ] joints), structures made of sliding disks in series [ 5 ], concentric pre-bent superelastic tubes [ 13 , 14 ], and superelastic notched tubes [ 15 ]. Actuation methods range from externally driven tendons [ 4 , 5 , 6 ], linear and rotational motors combined with intrinsic elasticity [ 13 , 14 ], pneumatics [ 16 , 17 , 18 ], and smart materials [ 12 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Continuum Robots: From Conventional to Customized Performance Indicators

et al. 2023

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Continuum robots have often been compared with rigid-link designs through conventional performance metrics (e.g., precision and Jacobian-based indicators). However, these metrics were developed to suit rigid-link robots and are tuned to capture specific facets of performance, in which continuum robots do not excel. Furthermore, conventional metrics either fail to capture the key advantages of continuum designs, such as their capability to operate in complex environments thanks to their slender shape and flexibility, or see them as detrimental (e.g., compliance). Previous work has rarely addressed this issue, and never in a systematic way. Therefore, this paper discusses the facets of a continuum robot performance that cannot be characterized by existing indicator and aims at defining a tailored framework of geometrical specifications and kinetostatic indicators. The proposed framework combines the geometric requirements dictated by the target environment and a methodology to obtain bioinspired reference metrics from a biological equivalent of the continuum robot (e.g., a snake, a tentacle, or a trunk). A numerical example is then reported for a swimming snake robot use case.

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A Novel Underactuated Continuum Robot With Shape Memory Alloy Clutches

Cited by 30 publications

References 39 publications

Continuum Robots: An Overview

Continuum Robots: An Overview

Adaptive Approximation Sliding-Mode Control of an Uncertain Continuum Robot with Input Nonlinearities and Disturbances

Continuum Robots: From Conventional to Customized Performance Indicators

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