Design and Kinematics on Biased Channel Retractable Continuum Robot

Continuum manipulators are type of hyper-redundant robots that without traditional rigid-links, and their intrinsic properties assure continuum manipulators can work in highly unstructured environments. To extend the potential applications of continuum manipulators, this paper presents a novel biased channel retractable (BCR) continuum manipulator. BCR continuum manipulator possesses a hollow channel when reserving its main backbone, and this structure provides the manipulator 'swallow' functions without sacrificing the stiffness generated by the backbone. This paper also establishes its kinematics model based on constant curvature assumption, and experimental result validates its correctness.