Abstract
Continuum robots have been utilized for several light-duty applications, such as minimally invasive surgery in the medical field and inspection in the industry. However, the existing design solutions do not offer system stiffness adaptability through a modular attachment. To overcome this disadvantage, in this paper, a low-cost sleeve is developed to ‘rigidize’ an existing continuum robot. The sleeve enables systems to withstand greater torques when undertaking tasks while al-lowing robots’ flexibility to navigate into a confined space. This ‘stiffening sleeve’ is made of heating elements (Nichrome wires) and thermoplastics (polymorph), which have the advantages of low manufacturing costs, simplicity of assembly/disassembly, and universal compatibility with various types of continuum robots. In a further experiment, a small sleeve is demonstrated to decrease the unwanted displacement of a slender continuum robot tip by 20%–69% under a load of 200–450 g.
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Acknowledgment
This research was supported by the EPSRC project (EP/P027121/1 Through-life performance: From science to instrumentation).
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Fang, Y., Bishop, C., Ba, W., Díez, J.B., Mohammad, A., Dong, X. (2020). A Universal Stiffening Sleeve Designed for All Types of Continuum Robot Systems. In: Mohammad, A., Dong, X., Russo, M. (eds) Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems. TAROS 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12228. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63486-5_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63486-5_2
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