Design of a 3D-Printed 6-DOF Tendon-Driven Continuum Robot With Spring-Based Flexure Joints

In recent years, soft continuum robots have emerged as a highly popular topic in robot manipulation. A typical application is in minimally invasive surgery, where their unique flexibility can be leveraged. Meanwhile, advancements in 3D printing technology have enabled the fabrication of complex geometries for continuum robots, which would be difficult to achieve using traditional manufacturing methods. However, some continuum robots, which contain large quantities of components, require extensive assembly processes. In addition, some 3D-printed continuum robots still face the challenge of confined degree of freedoms or low accuracy of motion. To address these challenges, we present a novel two-section tendon-driven continuum robot that can be fully fabricated through 3D printing in this research. The proposed continuum robot is composed of spring-based flexure joints and has six degrees of freedom. To evaluate the performance of the proposed structure, we have implemented an open-loop control method for trajectory following. Experimental results have also successfully demonstrated the motion accuracy of the proposed continuum robot structure.