Kinetostatic Modeling of Continuum Delta Robot With Variable Curvature Continuum Joints

Abstract Continuum robots have attracted lots of attention due to their structural compliance, manipulation dexterity, and design compactness. To extend the application scenarios, a slender continuum robot, CurviPicker, was developed for low-load medium-speed pick-and-place tasks in previous study. improve payload capacity positioning accuracy novel Delta Robot (CDR) then proposed with three dual-continuum-joint translators preliminary investigation. However, initial version CDR did not fully utilize bending ranges its joints. In addition, while being modeled using constant curvature assumption joints, shows lowered heavier objects, as CDR’s joints diverge from assumed shapes. this paper, re-optimized enable wider (>90 deg) generate an enlarged workspace, taking into consideration several possible interferences. Furthermore, kinetostatic model is derived based on Cosserat rod theory reduce errors caused by external loads. The experimental result showed that workspace approximately 9.47 × 107 mm3 compared volume 6.57 version. Within average error 1000-g load reduced 1.93 mm, 4.43 mm obtained assumption.