KINEMATICS OF AN INFINITELY FLEXIBLE ROBOT ARM

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.