Design and Analysis of a Cable-Driven Flexible Finger Based On Continuum Mechanism

Continuum manipulators have attracted lots of interests in the past few years, due to their super flexibility and dexterity. In this paper, a cable-driven flexible finger is designed and analyzed based on continuum mechanism. Compared with traditional rigid-link fingers, the proposed flexible finger shows excellent compliance and adaptivity. Mathematic models are necessary before real applications. However, accurate modeling of this kind of continuum mechanism is always a challenge. A large number of existing researches applied Piecewise Constant Curvature assumption to establish the kinematic model, but they totally neglected effect of statics, leading to unacceptable errors. This paper proposes the Unit Constant Curvature assumption to establish the static model based on Newton-Euler method, which considers effect of actuating tensions, gravity, external loads and internal contact forces. Based on the proposed static model, simulations are made to investigate the deformation of the flexible finger under various loading conditions. Results show that the finger profile greatly depends on forces and moments applied by both its own actuators and external environments.