Continuum Robots: Current Trends in Design, Control, and Applications

The presence of a multi-segmented and malleable structure makes continuum robot (CR) promising for use in medicine, industry, space, and deep-sea research. This trend encourages researchers worldwide to create fundamentally new types of continuously deformable CR structures suitable for various applications and delicate manipulations. Despite promising achievements, the processes of design, modeling, control system development, and improvement of existing CR mechanisms remain quite complex. Taking into account the main technological features of existing solutions, this article provides a comprehensive overview of the current state of continuums robots. The analysis covers general problems arising in the design of CRs, and possible solutions are also considered, allowing the full potential of CRs for wider application to be revealed. This work aims to analyze key design and modeling methods, where the main approaches to the process of creating CRs have been classified. Taking into account the identified limitations and problems in their practical application, this review focuses on their advantages, design principles, mathematical modeling, and control strategies. Modern approaches to kinematic and dynamic modelling of CRs and CR control algorithms, including AI-based methods, were analyzed. As a result, promising directions for improving CRs for various applications were identified.