Design of a Deployable Continuum Robot (DCR) With Coiling Mechanism

Continuum robots are highly suitable for interactive operations in confined spaces due to their inherent body compliance. However, traditional continuum robots with only bending degrees of freedom (DOFs) are limited in both workspace and dexterity, especially when manipulating an object near the proximal part of the arm. This article introduces a deployable continuum robot with a coiling mechanism, DCR, capable of fully stowing, or deploying, its arm into, or out of, a robot case with the help of a coiling mechanism. Deploying the continuum arm provides the robot with variable kinematics and workspace. A variable kinematics motion control framework is then established to enable the end-effector of the robot to smoothly travel through whole workspace while maintaining an optimal configuration. Based on this framework, visual servoing control methods can be applied to the robotic system, achieving high positioning precision up to 1 mm. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed DCR enlarge the workspace and improve the manipulating dexterity, which are particularly beneficial to applications in confined spaces.