Static modeling and analysis of soft manipulator considering environment contact based on segmented constant curvature method
ISSN: 0143-991x
Article publication date: 5 October 2020
Issue publication date: 5 July 2021
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to estimate the deformation of soft manipulators caused by obstacles accurately and the contact force and workspace can be also predicted.
Design/methodology/approach
The continuum deformation of the backbone of the soft manipulator under contact is regarded as two constant curvature arcs and the curvatures are different according to the fluid pressure and obstacle location based on piecewise constant curvature framework. Then, this study introduces introduce the moment balance and energy conservation equation to describe the static relationship between driving moment, elastic moment and contact moment. Finally, simulation and experiments are carried out to verify the accuracy of the proposed model.
Findings
For rigid manipulators, environmental contact except for the manipulated object was usually considered as a “collision” which should be avoided. For soft manipulators, an environment is an important tool for achieving manipulation goals and it might even be considered to be a part of the soft manipulator’s end-effector in some specified situations.
Research limitations/implications
There are also some limitations to the presented study. Although this paper has made progress in the static modeling under environmental contact, some practical factors still limit the further application of the model, such as the detection accuracy of the environment location and the deformation of the contact surface.
Originality/value
Based on the proposed kinematic model, the bending deformation with environmental contact is discussed in simulations and has been experimentally verified. The comparison results show the correctness and accuracy of the presented SCC model, which can be applied to predict the slender deformation under environmental contact without knowing the contact force.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge the funding support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51905067 and U1908228), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, High-tech ship research project (2018ZX04001-021) and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities under Grant (3132020115).
Citation
Chen, Y., Li, W. and Gong, Y. (2021), "Static modeling and analysis of soft manipulator considering environment contact based on segmented constant curvature method", Industrial Robot, Vol. 48 No. 2, pp. 233-246. https://doi.org/10.1108/IR-07-2020-0131
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited