Obstacle Avoidance Planning for Continuum Manipulators Considering Tip Position and Robot Configuration

In this paper, we focused on a two-segment cable-driven continuum robotic arm and analyzed the mapping relationship between the arm’s actuator space, joint space, and operational space based on its geometric characteristics. In order to address the challenges of feasible path generation for the tip position of the arm and arm configuration constraints, we propose an improved artificial potential field-based path planning algorithm for a continuum robotic arm. The algorithm plans the trajectory for the tip position of the arm and addresses the problems of local minima and unreachable targets by introducing virtual target points and scaling coefficients. To achieve minimal arm configuration changes while satisfying obstacle avoidance requirements, we formulate the arm configuration planning as an optimal planning problem with nonlinear constraints that guarantee the smoothness and energy optimality of the entire obstacle avoidance trajectory. The feasibility of the proposed algorithm is validated through simulation experiments and prototype experiments.