Learning the Inverse Kinematics of Magnetic Continuum Robot for Teleoperated Navigation

Magnetic continuum robots are subject to external magnetic fields and deformed remotely, simplifying the robot’s transmission mechanism and providing it with significant potential for miniaturization and operational flexibility. However, modeling magnetic field distribution generated by permanent magnets is complex and requires time-consuming pre-calibrations. Moreover, it is highly susceptible to environments with ferromagnetic materials, posing significant challenges for the control of magnetic continuum robots. In response, we propose an approach that does not overly focus on the magnetic field distribution but instead directly learns the inverse kinematics of magnetic continuum robots end-to-end. Binding the robot’s configuration to the pose of external magnets, precise control of continuum robots is facilitated. Additionally, we leverage teleoperation techniques to broaden the applicability of this method. By mounting magnets on a robotic arm and directly utilizing the target pose of the external magnet predicted by a multi-layer perceptron (MLP), we achieve the operation and navigation of magnetic continuum robots in complex environments. Experiments demonstrate that the mean control accuracy along the robot using our learning-based inverse kinematics is about half of the robot’s diameter.