Dynamic Modeling and Control of Continuum Robots Using an Optimized PID Control

Rigid robots are used in a wide range of applications, however, the tasks that they can manage are limited. The use of continuum robots on the other hand can be extended to a broader scope of areas due to their flexibility and high degrees of freedom. Basically, their modeling and control are still ongoing at a slow pace. To this end, in this paper, a simplified dynamic model of a continuum robot with variable curvature is developed using the Euler-Lagrange method and Taylor expansion taking into account a previously-existing formula that links each of the continuum robot’s bending angles to each other. After that, a robust optimized proportional integral derivative controller is proposed for the sake of controlling continuum robots during trajectory tracking. To achieve simplicity and efficiency, multi discrete proportional integral derivative controllers are purposefully used. Then, an adaptive particle swarm optimization is chosen to find the best values for the control parameters. Finally, the efficiency of the proposed controller is evaluated by tracking some trajectories by both VC and CC continuum robots, where the obtained results show that the proposed control algorithm provides good performance in terms of settling time, overshoot, and robustness against disturbances.