Jacobian Formulation for Two Classes of Cooperative Continuum Robots

Abstract

Continuum robots (CRs) are an important class of robots inspired by the biological counterparts. Recently, a new paradigm of using multiple CRs, under cooperative continuum robots (CCRs), has been introduced to increase the performance of CRs. The motivation behind this work is to provide a detailed discussion on the concept of CCRs and a detailed description of its two different sub-configurations, including Co-manipulative and Target-assist CCRs. This paper also presents kinematic modeling and Jacobian derivation of these two sub-configurations. It has been shown that kinematics of Co-manipulative CCRs could be well estimated using the DH approach; while, for deriving kinematics of the second subconfiguration, a combination of DH approach and an exact kinematic modeling approach, using Cosserat rod theory, has to be used. The obtained Jacobians could be used for control purposes and CR-based grasp synthesis.