Related papers: Clarke Transform -- A Fundamental Tool for Continu…
For almost all tendon-driven continuum robots, a segment is actuated by three or four tendons constrained by its mechanical design. For both cases, methods to account for the constraints are known. However, for an arbitrary number of…
We present a framework based on Clarke coordinates for spatial displacement-actuated continuum robots with an arbitrary number of joints. This framework consists of three modular components, i.e., a planner, trajectory generator, and…
In this letter, we demonstrate that previously proposed improved state parameterizations for soft and continuum robots are specific cases of Clarke coordinates. By explicitly deriving these improved parameterizations from a generalized…
In this paper, we consider an arbitrary number of joints and their arbitrary joint locations along the center line of a displacement-actuated continuum robot. To achieve this, we revisit the derivation of the Clarke transform leading to a…
The displacement-actuated continuum robot as an abstraction has been shown as a key abstraction to significantly simplify and improve approaches due to its relation to the Clarke transform. To highlight further potentials, we revisit and…
In this paper, we propose a dynamic model and control framework for tendon-driven continuum robots (TDCRs) with multiple segments and an arbitrary number of tendons per segment. Our approach leverages the Clarke transform, the…
For fully actuated rigid robots, kinematic inversion is a purely geometric problem, efficiently solved by closed-loop inverse kinematics (CLIK) schemes that compute joint configurations to position the robot body in space. For underactuated…
Contact-based motion planning for manipulation, object exploration or balancing often requires finding sequences of fixed and sliding contacts and planning the transition from one contact in the environment to another. However, most…
Robots exhibit a rich variety of symmetries arising from their mechanical structure and the properties of their tasks. Although many robotics problems exhibit several symmetries simultaneously, existing approaches typically treat them in…
Contact can be conceptualized as a set of constraints imposed on two bodies that are interacting with one another in some way. The nature of a contact, whether a point, line, or surface, dictates how these bodies are able to move with…
The inverse kinematics (IK) problem of continuum robots has been investigated in depth in the past decades. Under the constant-curvature bending assumption, closed-form IK solution has been obtained for continuum robots with variable…
Continuum arms, such as trunk and tentacle robots, lie between the two extremities of rigid and soft robots and promise to capture the best of both worlds in terms of manipulability, dexterity, and compliance. This paper proposes a new…
Learning to manipulate objects efficiently, particularly those involving sustained contact (e.g., pushing, sliding) and articulated parts (e.g., drawers, doors), presents significant challenges. Traditional methods, such as robot-centric…
Continuum robots suffer large deflections due to internal and external forces. Accurate modeling of their passive compliance is necessary for accurate environmental interaction, especially in scenarios where direct force sensing is not…
Accurate modelling of object deformations is crucial for a wide range of robotic manipulation tasks, where interacting with soft or deformable objects is essential. Current methods struggle to generalise to unseen forces or adapt to new…
This paper presents a unified approach to realize versatile distributed maneuvering with generalized formations. Specifically, we decompose the robots' maneuvers into two independent components, i.e., interception and enclosing, which are…
Soft continuum robots achieve complex deformation through elastic equilibrium, making their reachable motions governed jointly by structural design and actuation-induced mechanics. This work develops a general formulation that integrates…
High-performance closed-loop control of truly soft continuum manipulators has remained elusive. Experimental demonstrations have largely relied on sufficiently stiff, piecewise architectures in which each actuated segment behaves as a…
Suitable representations of dynamical systems can simplify their analysis and control. On this line of thought, this paper aims to answer the following question: Can a transformation of the generalized coordinates under which the actuators…
Simplifying complex 3D meshes is a crucial step in robotics applications to enable efficient motion planning and physics simulation. Common methods, such as approximate convex decomposition, represent a mesh as a collection of simple parts,…