Design of FDM-printable tendon-driven continuum robots using a serial S-shaped backbone structure

Abstract

Tendon-driven continuum robots (TDCR) are widely used in various engineering disciplines due to their exceptional flexibility and dexterity. However, their complex structure often leads to significant manufacturing costs and lengthy prototyping cycles. To cope with this problem, we propose a fused-deposition-modeling-printable (FDM-printable) TDCR structure design using a serial S-shaped backbone, which enables planar bending motion with minimized plastic deformation. A kinematic model for the proposed TDCR structure based on the pseudo-rigid-body model (PRBM) approach is developed. Experimental results have revealed that the proposed kinematic model can effectively predict the bending motion under certain tendon forces. In addition, analyses of mechanical hysteresis and factors influencing bending stiffness are conducted. Finally, A three-finger gripper is fabricated to demonstrate a possible application of the proposed TDCR structure.

Keywords

Continuum robot / FDM printing / Tendon-driven mechanism / Mechanics modeling

1 CRediT authorship contribution statement

Kaidi Zhu: Writing - original draft, Validation, Software, Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis. Tim C. Lueth: Funding acquisition. Yilun Sun: Writing - review & editing, Supervision, Project administration, Conceptualization, Funding acquisition.

2 Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

3 Acknowledgment

This research is supported by the teaching funding of TUM School of Engineering and Design.

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