Design and Test of a Continuum Navel Orange Picking Arm

In response to the challenge posed by the lack of a multilayer mapping relationship between components in existing continuum mechanical arms and their kinematic models, a prototype of a cable-driven continuum mechanical arm has been developed. This prototype serves to analyze and experimentally validate the kinematic relationships of each component. Geometric models have been established to address the kinematics between the cable-driven space, joint space, and workspace of the continuum mechanical arm. Both forward and inverse kinematics problems between the components have been examined to derive the mapping relationship between the length of the driving rope and joint angles, as well as the mapping relationship between the bending angle of the mechanical arm and its end position. In conclusion, a physical prototype of a mechanical arm segment was created through 3D printing to validate the theoretical model. The research results indicate that the proposed kinematic model exhibits an average positional error of less than 5%, confirming its suitability for precise end position control of cable-driven continuum mechanical arms.