Reactive motion planning for mobile continuum arm in dynamic industrial environment

Nowadays, rigid-link manipulators have been extensively used in various industrial applications, such as automotive industry and manufacturing operations. Nonetheless, despite of their precise and well-established position control, rigidlink manipulators sufier from their lack of exibility, especially when operated in cluttered, unknown, dynamic environments, as well as their inherent rigidity which limits their applications in a shared human-robot workspace. In this paper, we report our current progress on mobile continuum manipulators application in dynamic environments. The results show that a continuum arm, mounted on a mobile platform and equipped with a reactive motion planner, is a promising candidate to be used in dynamic industrial environments.