Research on Stiffness of Multibackbone Continuum Robot Based on Screw Theory and Euler-Bernoulli Beam

Abstract EN

Continuum robots have become a focus for extensive research, since they can work well in complex and confined environments.

The main contribution of this paper is to establish a stiffness model of a single section multibackbone continuum robot and analyze the effect of the structural parameters of continuum robot on the overall rotation and translation stiffness.

First, a stiffness model which indicates the end configuration of continuum robot under external load is deduced by the screw theory and Euler-Bernoulli beam.

Then, the stiffness elements are fully analyzed, therefore, obtaining the influence of the structural parameters of continuum robot on the stiffness elements.

Meanwhile, a numerical analysis of stiffness elements is given.

Furthermore, the minimum and maximum rotation/translation stiffness are introduced to analyze the effect of the structural parameters of continuum robot on the overall rotation and translation stiffness.

Finally, the experiments are used to validate the proposed stiffness model.

The experimental results show that the proposed stiffness model of continuum robot is correct and the errors are less than 7%.