Kinematic analysis and trajectory planning of multi-segment continuum manipulator

Abstract The flexible or continuum manipulators present excellent dexterity in confined space, which is beneficial to wide application prospects in many fields. In this paper, we establish the kinematic model and propose a trajectory planning algorithm for multi-segment continuum manipulators. The multi-level mapping from the actuator variables to manipulator tip is described. A novel modal kinematic method is proposed to overcome the singularity problem generated by the piecewise constant curvature kinematics modeling method. Then, the improved particle swarm optimization algorithm (IPSO) is proposed to solve the problem of redundant inverse kinematics and realize the trajectory tracking of the manipulator tip. In addition, the configuration parameters are restricted by the constraint functions, so that the precise shape of the multi-segment manipulator can be controlled. Finally, a series of numerical simulations are conducted to implement the investigation. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed modal kinematic method and the trajectory planning algorithm are effective for multi-segment continuum manipulator.