A Universal Stiffening Sleeve Designed for All Types of Continuum Robot Systems

Fang, Yihua; Bishop, Christopher; Ba, Weiming; Díez, Jorge Barrientos; Mohammad, Abd; Dong, Xin

Abstract

© 2020, Springer Nature Switzerland AG. 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.

• Conference Name: Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems: 21st Annual Conference, TAROS 2020, Nottingham, UK, September 16, 2020, Proceedings
• Conference Location: Nottingham, UK
• Start Date: Sep 16, 2020
• End Date: Sep 16, 2020
• Online Publication Date: Dec 3, 2020
• Publication Date: 2020
• Deposit Date: Jan 19, 2024
• Publisher: Springer Verlag
• Pages: 15-24
• Series Title: Lecture Notes in Computer Science
• Series Number: LNAI 12228
• Book Title: Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems: 21st Annual Conference, TAROS 2020, Nottingham, UK, September 16, 2020, Proceedings
• ISBN: 9783030634858
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63486-5_2
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/5173659
• Publisher URL: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-63486-5