Continuum Manipulators

Kinematic modeling, control and regulation of continuum robots.

Description

The Bionic Handling Assistant (BHA) is a Continuum Manipulator, developed by the German company Festo in 2010. This innovative manipulator design was awarded in 2010 with the German Federal President’s Prize for achievements in technology and innovation, called "Deutscher Zukunftspreis". This novel manipulator with its pneumatic actuators is inherently save and hence well suited for human-machine interaction.

With its continous manipulator structure and no rigid links, this manipulator enables new applications. But in order to control it intuitively, new methods for continuum manipulators need to be developed and transferred from the field of rigid link robotics.

The main goal of this project is the development and experimental validation of new methods for the model-based control of continuum manipulators, applied to the testing system of the Bionic Handling Assistant.Hence, the following aspects need to be considered:

  • Kinematic modelling
  • Kinematic control
  • Feedback and feedforward control of pneumatic actuators
  • Dynamic modelling
  • Feedback and feedforward control

Partner

This research project is part of an industrial cooperation with Festo AG & Co. KG, a worldwide leading supplier of pneumatic and electrical automation technology, offering industrial and process automation, components and solutions.

Publications

  • V. Falkenhahn, A. Hildebrandt, R. Neumann & O. Sawodny, “Dynamic Control of the Bionic Handling Assistant”, IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, accepted for publication, doi:10.1109/TMECH.2016.2605820
  • V. Falkenhahn, T. Mahl, A. Hildebrandt, R. Neumann & O. Sawodny, “Dynamic Modeling of Bellows-Actuated Continuum Robots Using the Euler–Lagrange Formalism”, IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 31, pp. 1483-1496, 2015, doi:10.1109/TRO.2015.2496826, [pdf]
  • T. Mahl, A. Hildebrandt & O. Sawodny, “A Variable Curvature Continuum Kinematics for Kinematic Control of the Bionic Handling Assistant”, IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 30, pp. 935-949, 2014, doi:10.1109/tro.2014.2314777
  • V. Falkenhahn, F. A. Bender, A. Hildebrandt, R. Neumann & O. Sawodny, “Online TCP Trajectory Planning for Redundant Continuum Manipulators using Quadratic Programming”, IEEE International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM), Banff, Kanada, 2016, pp. 1163-1168
  • V. Falkenhahn, A. Hildebrandt, R. Neumann & O. Sawodny, “Model-based feed-forward position control of constant curvature continuum robots using feedback linearization”, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Seattle, WA, USA, 2015, pp. 762-767, doi:10.1109/ICRA.2015.7139264
  • L. Toscano, V. Falkenhahn, A. Hildebrandt, F. Braghin & O. Sawodny, “Configuration space impedance control for continuum manipulators”, International Conference on Automation, Robotics and Applications (ICARA), 2015, doi:10.1109/ICARA.2015.7081215
  • V. Falkenhahn, T. Mahl, A. Hildebrandt, R. Neumann & O. Sawodny, “Dynamic modeling of constant curvature continuum robots using the Euler-Lagrange formalism”, IEEE/ RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2014, pp. 2428-2433, doi:10.1109/IROS.2014.6942892
  • V. Falkenhahn, A. Hildebrandt & O. Sawodny, “Trajectory Optimization of Pneumatically Actuated, Redundant Continuum Manipulators”, American Control Conference (ACC), 2014, pp. 4008-4013, doi:10.1109/ACC.2014.6858736
  • V. Falkenhahn, A. Hildebrandt & O. Sawodny, “Offline Trajectory Planning of a Pneumatically Actuated, Continuum Manipulator on the Example of the Bionic Handling Assistant”, International Fluid Power Conference (IFK), 2014, pp. 456-463
  • T. Mahl, A. Mayer, A. Hildebrandt & O. Sawodny, “A Variable Curvature Modeling Approach for Kinematic Control of Continuum Manipulators”, American Control Conference (ACC), Washington, DC, USA, 2013, pp. 4952-4957
  • T. Mahl, A. Hildebrandt & O. Sawodny, “Forward kinematics of a compliant pneumatically actuated redundant manipulator”, IEEE Conference on Industrial Electronics and Applications (ICIEA), 2012, pp. 1267-1273, doi:10.1109/ICIEA.2012.6360917

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