Towards Accurate Shape Reconstruction of Compact Bionic Handling Arm

Abstract

Continuum robots can continuously curve to give much more flexibility than rigid robots. Usually, continuum robots are made up of soft flexible material and have complex structures to provide high dexterity of motion. The presence of these factors, i.e., soft material and complex structure, make mathematical modeling of continuum robots a cumbersome task. This paper aims to discuss the Pythagorean Hodograph (PH) based method for shape reconstruction of continuum robots and proposes a methodology for improving this reconstructed shape using experimental data. The method is successfully applied to Compact Bionic Handling Arm (CBHA) manipulator. The results show a clear improvement in the accuracy.