Kinematics for Constrained Continuum Robots Using Wavelet Decomposition

Over the past several years, there has been a rapidly expanding interest in the study and construction of a new class of robot manipulators which utilize high degree of freedom, or continuous, backbone structures. In this paper, we consider some basic properties of these "continuum" or "hyper-redundant" robots. We base our analysis around remotely-driven, tendon-actuated manipulators such as the Rice/Clemson "Elephant's Trunk". We briefly discuss the kinematic model, before detailing how to approach the inverse kinematics for a planar continuum robot by decomposition into either a natural or a wavelet basis. We also examine how a wavelet decomposition method can help resolve redundancy in a planar continuum robot.