Dynamic Modeling of Tendon-Driven Co-Manipulative Continuum Robots

This study presents a general framework for the dynamic analysis of tendon-driven co-manipulative continuum robots with flexible objects. Hence, the actuations of the arms have been provided by bending. Furthermore, the object is modeled as a flexible rod to account for the flexibility of the object into the coupled dynamics of the robot. The equations of motion are summarized based on Cosserat-rod modeling of the arms and the object to account for large deflections. A numerical solution method is developed to solve the equations of motion and to obtain the dynamic response. The numerical results are verified through the experiments. The results show that the presented algorithm has a great potential for the dynamic modeling of cooperative continuum robots. Although integration of the object flexibility increases the complexity of the model, the coupled flexibility of the arms and object has unavoidable effects on the dynamic response of the robot and should be considered for analysis and identification purposes.