Design and kinematic of a dexterous bioinspired elephant trunk robot with variable diameter

Zhou, Pan; Yao, Jiantao; Wei, Chunjie; Zhang, Shuai; Zhang, Hongyu; Qi, Shupeng

doi:10.1088/1748-3190/ac72e0

Cited by 10 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…Fast response, compact design, and Larger required driving force [2,5,8,[28][29][30] providing both tension and thrust due to the larger stiffness of the driving rod, imperfect flexibility, and inconvenience for the multi-section design Pneumatic actuation Easy implementation, mature Low precision and [13,20,[32][33][34][35] technology, low cost, and lighter inconvenience for long-distance transmission due to nonlinear response, gas leakage, and gas compressibility…”

Section: Rod Drivenmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Nowadays, continuum robots can be generally divided into three categories according to their structure [9,21], including single-backbone continuum robots [6,18,[22][23][24][25], concentric-tube continuum robots [7,26], and multi-backbone continuum robots [5,8,20,[27][28][29][30][31]. And their actuation methods mainly include pneumatic artificial muscles [13,20,[32][33][34][35], tendon-driven mechanisms [6,11,22,23,36], roddriven mechanisms [2,5,8,[28][29][30], electro-active polymers [4,16,[37][38][39][40][41][42], shape memory alloys (SMA) [1,24,[43][44][45][46]…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Meanwhile, bioinspiration and biomimetics are widely used in the design of soft robots [18,35,37,[54][55][56][57][58][59][60], which are very effective for creating novel continuum robots. Many types of bioinspired continuum robots with high flexibility have been designed, inspired by soft organs of organisms which consist of tens of thousands of muscles and have excellent flexibility, such as elephant trunks [35,58,59] and octopus arms [18,60]. In addition, there is another type of organism in nature that produces bending by the coupling of bones and muscles, such as fishes, snakes, and the tails of vertebrates.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A bioinspired fishbone continuum robot with rigid-flexible-soft coupling structure

Zhou¹,

Yao²,

Zhang³

et al. 2022

Bioinspir. Biomim.

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Rigid-flexible-soft coupled robots are an important development direction of robotics, which face many theoretical and technical challenges in design, manufacturing, and modeling. Inspired by fishbones, we propose a novel cable-driven single-backbone continuum robot which has compact structure, light weight, and high dexterity. Different from the existing single-backbone continuum robot, the middle backbone of the continuum robot is serially formed by multiple cross-arranged bioinspired fishbone units. The proposed bioinspired fishbone unit having good one-dimensional bending properties is a special rigid-flexible-soft structure mainly made by multi-material 3D printing technology. The unique design and manufacturing of the middle backbone bring the continuum robot excellent constant curvature characteristics and reduce the coupling between different motion dimensions, laying a foundation for the continuum robot to have a more accurate theoretical model as well as regular and controllable deformation. Moreover, we build the forward and inverse kinematics model based on the geometric analysis method, and analyze its workspace. Further, the comparison between the experimental and theoretical results shows that the prediction errors of the kinematics model are within desired 0.5 mm. Also, we establish the relation between the cable driving force of the bioinspired fishbone unit and its bending angle which can provide a guidance for the optimization of the continuum robot in the future. The application demos prove that the continuum robot has good dexterity and compliance, and can perform tasks such as obstacle crossing locomotion and narrow space transportation. This work provides new ideas for the bioinspired design and high-precision modeling of continuum robots.

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Section: Rod Drivenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

A bioinspired fishbone continuum robot with rigid-flexible-soft coupling structure

Zhou¹,

Yao²,

Zhang³

et al. 2022

Bioinspir. Biomim.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Bionic approaches are widely used in the design of modular robots, including footed robots [1][2][3][4][5], continuous robots [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17], which mimic biological macrostructures, and particle robots [18][19][20][21][22][23][24]. The functionality of the modular robot depends on its configuration and size.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A differentiable actuator extends potential configurations of modular robots

Li,

Zhang,

Liang

et al. 2024

Smart Mater. Struct.

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Mesenchymal stem cells can be differentiated into various cell lineages under the influence of mechano-niche. Inspired by this approach, this study presents a differentiable stem cell actuator unit (SAU) driven by a shape memory alloy (SMA), and a modular robotic framework. Similar to mechanically guided differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells, SAUs can be differentiated into a series of differentiated actuator units (DAUs) under external preload. This process has been modeled, simulated, and experimentally validated, with testing conducted on three distinct types and 14 specifications of DAUs. DAUs weighing as light as 1.9g exhibited outputs reaching up to 10.6N and 46.32Nmm. Our team has developed seven application prototypes based on this bio-inspired framework including mobile robots, manipulators and end effectors. This work pioneers the integration of differentiable concepts and principles into the design of modular robots, enabling a wider range of potential configurations and capabilities.

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“…The evolutionary direction of the elephant trunk’s variable cross-sections effectively reduces the stress concentration in the supporting torso, and at the same time, the accessible workspace gradually increases. This allows for greater payload at the end of the creature and more flexibility in operation (Zhou et al , 2022). Therefore, a variable cross-section ETR is designed in this paper to take advantage of the variable cross-section structure to meet the demands of working in different environments.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design and development of a cable-driven elephant trunk robot with variable cross-sections

Qin

Wang²,

Li³

et al. 2023

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Purpose In large equipment and highly complex confined workspaces, the maintenance is usually carried out by snake-arm robots with equal cross-sections. However, the equal cross-sectional design results in the snake arm suffering from stress concentration and restricted working space. The purpose of this paper is to design a variable cross-section elephant trunk robot (ETR) that can address these shortcomings through bionic principles. Design/methodology/approach This paper proposes a cable-driven ETR to explore the advantages and inspiration of variable cross-section features for hyper-redundant robot design. For the kinematic characteristics, the influence of the variable cross-section design on the maximum joint angle of the ETR is analysed using the control variables method and the structural parameters are selected. Based on the biological inspiration of the whole elephant trunk following the movement of the trunk tip, a trajectory-tracking algorithm is designed to solve the inverse kinematics of the ETR. Findings Simulation and test results show the unique advantages of the proposed variable cross-section ETR in kinematics and forces, which can reduce stress concentrations and increase the flexibility of movement. Originality/value This paper presents a design method for a variable cross-section ETR for confined working spaces, analyses the kinematic characteristics and develops a targeted trajectory control algorithm.

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Design and kinematic of a dexterous bioinspired elephant trunk robot with variable diameter

Cited by 10 publications

References 47 publications

A bioinspired fishbone continuum robot with rigid-flexible-soft coupling structure

A bioinspired fishbone continuum robot with rigid-flexible-soft coupling structure

A differentiable actuator extends potential configurations of modular robots

Design and development of a cable-driven elephant trunk robot with variable cross-sections

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