A Contact-Aided Model for Soft Continuum Robots Moving in Unstructured Environment

Due to their inherent flexibility and high human-computer interaction potential, soft continuum robots have been developed and popularized in industrial and medical scenarios. However, when moving in an unstructured environment, the contact with environment will change the configuration parameters of the robot, which brings problems to the control. Aiming at improving the control performance of soft continuum robots in an unstructured environment, a contact-aided model is proposed to estimate the varying configurations of the robot. Besides, a model-based controller is proposed to control the robot in an unstructured environment. To verify the performance of the proposed method, a small-scale soft continuum robot is designed and fabricated. Through the characterization experiment, the robot shows a large workspace by changing the contact position, and the kinematic model is verified. Through the trajectory tracking experiment, the robot showed good accuracy, with an average error of 1.2mm. Through an exploration experiment in the unstructured environment, the robot showed good control effect, with an average error of 1.9mm. This work enhances the application capability of the soft continuum robots in unstructured environments.