Design and kinematics of a lightweight cruciformcontinuum robot

The design of new lightweight and dexterous configurations is a majorresearch focus for continuum robotics. This work proposes a cruciformcontinuum robot. Its unique feature is that it is formed by multiplecruciform-arranged elastic sheets with a single dimension of motionconnected in series, and thus it has low-coupling motion characteristics. Inaddition, the cruciform continuum robot has the advantages of lighter weight(65 g), better dexterity, and higher motion accuracy. In this paper, theforward and inverse kinematics models of the cruciform continuum robot areestablished by geometric methods based on the assumption of constantcurvature, and its workspace is analysed. It is experimentally verified thatthe tip position errors are less than 1 mm, and the cable length errors areless than 0.4 mm. Further, the cruciform continuum robot is successfullyused for the nucleic acid detection simulation experiment, which confirmsits good dexterity and man-machine safety. The main contribution of thispaper is to provide a new configuration for the lightweight and dexterouscontinuum robots, and to further provide a reference method for improving theirmodelling accuracy from the perspective of structure.