Kinetostatic Analysis of a Spatial Soft Pneumatic Manipulator Including Gravity Effect

This paper is focused on a kinematic model for a spatial soft robot, including a combination of three pneumatic actuators. The kinematics of these robots is significantly under the effect of external forces. Therefore, the kinetostatic analysis is essential to be carried out. The proposed model in this paper has considered the effects of gravity on the robot configuration and end-effector position. This effect is investigated by the transverse-longitudinal continuous deformation analysis of the mentioned soft robot. Furthermore, this method can be used for applying other recognizable external forces to robot modeling in bending and longitudinal movement. Modeling accuracy has been evaluated by simulations that show the maximum error of 3.9% for the end-effector position in the z coordinate.