Force/Velocity Manipulability Analysis for 3D Continuum Robots

The enhanced dexterity and manipulability offered by continuum manipulators makes them the robots of choice for complex procedures inside the human body. However, without tailored analytical tools to evaluate their manipulability, many capabilities of continuum robots such as safe and effective manipulation will remain largely inaccessible. This paper presents a quantifiable measure for analysing force/velocity manipulability of continuum robots. We expand classical measures of manipulability for rigid robots to introduce three types of manipulability indices to continuum robots, namely, velocity, compliance, and unified force-velocity manipulability. We provide a specific case study using the proposed method to analyse the force/velocity manipulability for a concentric-tube robot. We investigate the application of the manipulability measures to compare performance of continuum robots in terms of compliance and force-velocity manipulability. The proposed manipulability measures enable future research on design and optimal path planning for continuum robots.