Motion Analysis of Rod-Driven Continuum Robots

This paper presents the motion modelling of rod-driven multi-backbone continuum robots via the vector form intrinsic finite element (VFIFE) method. The contact force between the driving rod and the disk is calculated by the contact algorithm and penalty method. Furthermore, the static modeling of the system is achieved by employing a dynamic relaxation algorithm with kinetic damping on the dynamic equations established by VFIFE. Finally, experiments are conducted to validate the simulation results of a single-segment rod-driven continuum robot, while simulations are exclusively performed on a multi-segment variant. The simulation results match well with the experiment ones.