Real-time method for tip following navigation of continuum snake arm robots

Palmer, David; Cobos-Guzman, Salvador; Axinte, Dragos

Abstract

This paper presents a novel technique for the navigation of a snake arm robot, for real-time inspections in complex and constrained environments. These kinds of manipulators rely on redundancy, making the inverse kinematics very difficult. Therefore, a tip following method is proposed using the sequential quadratic programming optimization approach to navigate the robot. This optimization is used to minimize a set of changes to the arrangement of the snake arm that lets the algorithm follow the desired trajectory with minimal error. The information of the Snake Arm pose is used to limit deviations from the path taken. Therefore, the main objective is to find an efficient objective function that allows uninterrupted movements in real-time. The method proposed is validated through an extensive set of simulations of common arrangements and poses for the snake arm robot. For a 24 DoF robot, the average computation time is 0.4 s, achieving a speed of 4.5 mm/s, with deviation of no more than 25 mm from the ideal path.

Citation

Palmer, D., Cobos-Guzman, S., & Axinte, D. (2014). Real-time method for tip following navigation of continuum snake arm robots. Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 62(10), 1478-1485. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.robot.2014.05.013

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: May 26, 2014
• Online Publication Date: Jun 4, 2014
• Publication Date: 2014-10
• Deposit Date: Sep 10, 2020
• Journal: Robotics and Autonomous Systems
• Print ISSN: 0921-8890
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 62
• Issue: 10
• Pages: 1478-1485
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.robot.2014.05.013
• Keywords: Control and Systems Engineering; Software; General Mathematics; Computer Science Applications
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/4894056
• Publisher URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921889014001080
• Additional Information: This article is maintained by: Elsevier; Article Title: Real-time method for tip following navigation of continuum snake arm robots; Journal Title: Robotics and Autonomous Systems; CrossRef DOI link to publisher maintained version: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.robot.2014.05.013; Content Type: article; Copyright: Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.