The Natural-CCD Algorithm, a Novel Method to Solve the Inverse Kinematics of Hyper-redundant and Soft Robots

Abstract

This article presents a new method to solve the inverse kinematics problem of hyper-redundant and soft manipulators. From an engineering perspective, this kind of robots are underdetermined systems. Therefore, they exhibit an infinite number of solutions for the inverse kinematics problem, and to choose the best one can be a great challenge. A new algorithm based on the cyclic coordinate descent (CCD) and named as natural-CCD is proposed to solve this issue. It takes its name as a result of generating very harmonious robot movements and trajectories that also appear in nature, such as the golden spiral. In addition, it has been applied to perform continuous trajectories, to develop whole-body movements, to analyze motion planning in complex environments, and to study fault tolerance, even for both prismatic and rotational joints. The proposed algorithm is very simple, precise, and computationally efficient. It works for robots either in two or three spatial dimensions and handles a large amount of degrees-of-freedom. Because of this, it is aimed to break down barriers between discrete hyper-redundant and continuum soft robots.

Design of a Hyper-Redundant Robot and Teleoperation Using Mixed Reality for Inspection Tasks

“…This work will use the Natural-CCD algorithm to control the presented robot since it is based on simple principles and provide accurate solutions while being computationally efficient for real-time applications. Additionally, it allows multiple customization options, manages restrictions and collisions and provides intermediate configurations to reach the final solution [7]. It relies on an iterative approach that uses small increments to control the movement of each module of the robot leading to very simple and fast-converging solutions.…”

“…(ii) When the actuation is not located in the robot body, a mid-level control should study how to transfer the movements from the actuators to the joints. (iii) And high-level controls that rely on previous ones to manage the whole-body movements from a higher level of abstraction such as solving the inverse kinematics problem [7], guiding the robot with a follow-the-leader strategy [8], or performing shape controls [9], among many others.…”

Modelling the Soft Robot Kyma Based on Real‐Time Finite Element Method

“…It may be applied for both inextensible and extensible robots [CB95, CB94a]. According to some authors, models that approximate continuum manipulators by discrete hyper‐redundant ones could be appropriate [TRKW08, MBdC18].…”

Robots Hiper-Redundantes: Clasificación, Estado del Arte y Problemática

“…De acuerdo con algunos autores, los modelos que aproximan manipuladores continuos mediante robots hiper-redundantes discretos pueden también ser apropiados , Martín, Barrientos et al 2018. Otros modelos de gran precisión han sido desarrollados a partir del método de los elementos finitos (FEM, en inglés) que a menudo permiten su aplicación en tiempo real (Duriez 2013).…”