Modeling and Experiments on the Swallowing and Disgorging Characteristics of an Underwater Continuum Manipulator

Wang, Haihang; Xu, He; Yu, Fajun; Li, Xin; Yang, Chen; Chen, Siqing; Chen, Junlong; Zhang, Yonghui; Zhou, Xueshan

doi:10.1109/icra40945.2020.9196780

Cited by 11 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…Compared with the existing variable-diameter mechanisms by an angled scissor mechanism [39], a shape memory alloy actuator [40], and McKibben water hydraulic artificial muscles [46], the newly proposed double pyramid deployable mechanism has stronger structural stability. This variable-diameter method has the advantages of faster, more stable, and higher accuracy.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design and kinematic of a dexterous bioinspired elephant trunk robot with variable diameter

et al. 2022

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How to further improve the dexterity of continuum robots so that they can quickly change their structural size like flexible biological organs is a key challenge in the field of robotics. To tackle this dexterity challenge, this paper proposes a soft-rigid coupled bioinspired elephant trunk robot with variable diameter, which is enabled by combining a soft motion mechanism with a novel rigid variable-diameter mechanism (double pyramid deployable mechanism). The integration of these two mechanisms has produced three significant beneficial effects: i) The coexistence of multi-degree-of-freedom motion capability and variable size function greatly improves the dexterity of the elephant trunk robot. ii) The motion refinement can be improved by structural amplification, making up for the low resolution of soft actuators. iii) Its stiffness can be increased by enlarging its diameter, while its reachable workspace can be increased by decreasing its diameter. Thus, the elephant trunk robot can optimize its performance when facing different tasks by opening and closing the rigid variable-diameter mechanism. Further, we established a kinematic model of the elephant trunk robot by the structure discretization method and the principle of mechanism equivalence, and experimentally verified its reasonableness. The demonstration experiments show that the elephant trunk robot has good flexibility. This work provides a new variable diameter configuration for continuum robots, and presents a method of how to analyze the kinematics of continuum mechanisms using rigid mechanism theory.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design and kinematic of a dexterous bioinspired elephant trunk robot with variable diameter

et al. 2022

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Section: Investigation On Soft Grippers Design With Different Charact...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Controlling the motion of soft grippers is crucial for enabling complex functionality. One important research direction is the modeling of motion control, including the study of the multi‐section composite response [ 23 ] of flexible pneumatic drive structures. Bionics, such as the bionic octopus Laschi, [ 24 ] also offer a route to achieving complex functionality through control.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Advanced Technologies and Applications of Robotic Soft Grippers

Qu,

Yu,

Tang

et al. 2024

Adv Materials Technologies

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The robotic soft gripper is a significant and expanding area of study. It is primarily a unique gadget that interacts with the external environment in a certain actuating mode by utilizing the properties of flexible materials and biological shape design. Robotic grippers are increasingly needed in the fields of medical operations, auxiliary maintenance, land rescue, underwater grasping, and space manipulation due to the increasing demand for automation. However, conventional rigid gripper is not the ideal option or optimal design for particular activities requiring a high degree of adaptation and interaction. The soft gripper can interact with its surroundings safely and flexibly because it is comprised of flexible materials. Currently, certain technical system has been developed through research on flexible grippers, but it is still in its infancy. This paper reviews the materials and manufacturing technology, actuating technology, and sensing and control technology of flexible mechanical grippers. Finally, several main application areas of soft grippers are discussed from a technical point of view, as well as possible challenges for further development.

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“…The characteristics of the rigid-flexible structural make the manipulator keep flexible and have specific stiffness to improve its load capacity. See more details about the manipulator in this paper [20].…”

Section: Kinematic Modelingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The manipulator is designed for underwater working and uses WHAMs as soft actuators. The combination of rigidity and flexibility gives it a high-load capacity, and the variable-diameter characteristic allows it to swallow and disgorge objects [20]. We establish the kinematics model of the manipulator based on the well-known PCC model.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Kinematic modeling and solution of rigid-flexible and variable-diameter underwater continuous manipulator with load

Yang

et al. 2021

Robotica

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This paper presents a method to solve the kinematics of a rigid-flexible and variable-diameter continuous manipulator. The multi-segment underwater manipulator is driven by McKibben water hydraulic artificial muscle (WHAM). Considering the effect of elasticity and friction, we optimized the static mathematical model of WHAM. The kinematic model of the manipulator with load is established based on the hypothesis of piecewise constant curvature (PCC). We developed an optimization algorithm to calculate the length of the WHAMs according to the principle of minimum strain energy and obtain the configuration space parameters of the kinematic model. Based on the infinitesimal method, the homogeneous transformation matrices of the variable-diameter bending sections are computed, and the terminal position and attitude are obtained. In this paper, we studied the working space of the manipulator by quantitative analysis of the impact factors including pressure and load. A deep neural network (DNN) with six hidden layers is designed to solve inverse kinematics. The forward kinematic results are used to train and test the DNN, and the correlation coefficient between the output and target samples reaches 0.945. We carried out an underwater experiment and verified the effectiveness of the kinematic modeling and solution method.

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Modeling and Experiments on the Swallowing and Disgorging Characteristics of an Underwater Continuum Manipulator

Cited by 11 publications

References 16 publications

Design and kinematic of a dexterous bioinspired elephant trunk robot with variable diameter

Design and kinematic of a dexterous bioinspired elephant trunk robot with variable diameter

Advanced Technologies and Applications of Robotic Soft Grippers

Kinematic modeling and solution of rigid-flexible and variable-diameter underwater continuous manipulator with load

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