Design, modeling and control of a pneumatically actuated manipulator inspired by biological continuum structures

Biological tentacles, such as octopus arms, have entirely flexible structures and virtually infinite degrees of freedom (DOF) that allow for elongation, shortening and bending at any point along the arm length. The amazing dexterity of biological tentacles has driven the growing implementation of continuum manipulators in robotic systems. This paper presents a pneumatic manipulator inspired by biological continuum structures in some of their key features and functions, such as continuum morphology, intrinsic compliance and stereotyped motions with hyper redundant DOF. The kinematics and dynamics of the manipulator are formulated and identified, and a hierarchical controller taking inspiration from the structure of an octopus nervous system is used to relate desired stereotyped motions to individual actuator inputs. Simulations and experiments are carried out to validate the model and prototype where good agreement was found between the two.

[1]  Dario Paolo,et al.  Design Of A Biomimetic Robotic Octopus Arm , 2008 .

[2]  W. Kier,et al.  The arrangement and function of octopus arm musculature and connective tissue , 2007, Journal of morphology.

[3]  Y Gutfreund,et al.  Organization of Octopus Arm Movements: A Model System for Studying the Control of Flexible Arms , 1996, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[4]  Christopher C. Pagano,et al.  Continuum robot arms inspired by cephalopods , 2005, SPIE Defense + Commercial Sensing.

[5]  Blake Hannaford,et al.  Measurement and modeling of McKibben pneumatic artificial muscles , 1996, IEEE Trans. Robotics Autom..

[6]  B. Hochner,et al.  Nonsomatotopic Organization of the Higher Motor Centers in Octopus , 2009, Current Biology.

[7]  B. Hochner,et al.  Control of Octopus Arm Extension by a Peripheral Motor Program , 2001, Science.

[8]  P.R. Bandyopadhyay,et al.  Trends in biorobotic autonomous undersea vehicles , 2005, IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering.

[9]  B Mazzolai,et al.  An octopus-bioinspired solution to movement and manipulation for soft robots , 2011, Bioinspiration & biomimetics.

[10]  Ian D. Walker,et al.  Soft robotics: Biological inspiration, state of the art, and future research , 2008 .

[11]  F. Grasso.  Octopus sucker-arm coordination in grasping and manipulation* , 2008 .

[12]  B Mazzolai,et al.  Soft-robotic arm inspired by the octopus: II. From artificial requirements to innovative technological solutions , 2012, Bioinspiration & biomimetics.

[13]  J A Mather,et al.  How do octopuses use their arms? , 1998, Journal of comparative psychology.

[14]  John Kenneth Salisbury,et al.  Mechanics Modeling of Tendon-Driven Continuum Manipulators , 2008, IEEE Transactions on Robotics.

[15]  Howie Choset,et al.  A mobile hyper redundant mechanism for search and rescue tasks , 2003, Proceedings 2003 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2003) (Cat. No.03CH37453).

[16]  Apoorva D. Kapadia,et al.  A Novel Continuum Trunk Robot Based on Contractor Muscles , 2013 .

[17]  Germán Sumbre,et al.  Neurobiology: Motor control of flexible octopus arms , 2005, Nature.

[18]  Paolo Dario,et al.  Soft Robot Arm Inspired by the Octopus , 2012, Adv. Robotics.

[19]  K. Tanie,et al.  Biomimetic soft actuator: design, modeling, control, and applications , 2005, IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics.

[20]  B. Hochner,et al.  The Octopus: A Model for a Comparative Analysis of the Evolution of Learning and Memory Mechanisms , 2006, The Biological Bulletin.

[21]  Darwin G. Caldwell,et al.  Timing-based control via echo state network for soft robotic arm , 2012, The 2012 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN).

[22]  Tamar Flash,et al.  Dynamic model of the octopus arm. II. Control of reaching movements. , 2005, Journal of neurophysiology.

[23]  Ian D. Walker,et al.  Kinematics for multisection continuum robots , 2006, IEEE Transactions on Robotics.

[24]  Fumitoshi Matsuno,et al.  Experimental study of Redundant Snake Robot Based on Kinematic Model , 2007, Proceedings 2007 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[25]  Jennifer H. Shin,et al.  Shape memory alloy-based small crawling robots inspired by C. elegans , 2011, Bioinspiration & biomimetics.

[26]  Tamar Flash,et al.  Dynamic model of the octopus arm. I. Biomechanics of the octopus reaching movement. , 2005, Journal of neurophysiology.

[27]  Meirav Galun,et al.  Nearly automatic motion capture system for tracking octopus arm movements in 3D space , 2009, Journal of Neuroscience Methods.

[28]  Robert J. Webster,et al.  Design and Kinematic Modeling of Constant Curvature Continuum Robots: A Review , 2010, Int. J. Robotics Res..

[29]  Ian D. Walker,et al.  Three module lumped element model of a continuum arm section , 2011, 2011 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[30]  B. Hochner,et al.  Octopuses Use a Human-like Strategy to Control Precise Point-to-Point Arm Movements , 2006, Current Biology.

[31]  Darwin G. Caldwell,et al.  Control architecture for robots with continuum arms inspired by octopus vulgaris neurophysiology , 2012, 2012 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[32]  Ian D. Walker,et al.  Kinematics and the Implementation of an Elephant's Trunk Manipulator and Other Continuum Style Robots , 2003, J. Field Robotics.

[33]  Gregory S. Chirikjian.  A continuum approach to hyper-redundant manipulator dynamics , 1993, Proceedings of 1993 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS '93).

[34]  Russell H. Taylor,et al.  A dexterous system for laryngeal surgery , 2004, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2004. Proceedings. ICRA '04. 2004.

[35]  Yoshihiro Takita,et al.  An electricity-free snake-like propulsion mechanism driven and controlled by fluids , 2009, 2009 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[36]  B Mazzolai,et al.  Design of a biomimetic robotic octopus arm , 2009, Bioinspiration & biomimetics.

[37]  Darwin G. Caldwell,et al.  Control of pneumatic muscle actuators , 1995 .