This article describes a research effort to develop a command and control algorithm for a proposed flexible robot arm. This robot arm, unlike previous arms, is assumed to be extremely flexible, possessing a large number of degrees of freedom and functioning as a "tentacle." Algorithms for commanding smooth motion of this arm in the presence of obstacles are developed, including both forward and inverse kinematics. The approach is based on the use of Catmull-Rom splines and local radius of curvature commands to discrete actuators along the arm's length. Several example trajectories are presented and explained. According to the proposed method, a spline curve algorithm is successfully applied for the configuration of the flexible robot and the accuracy and the collision avoidability of the flexible arm are verified through simulation. 0 1993 John Wiiey & Sons, Inc.
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