A Universal Stiffening Sleeve Designed for All Types of Continuum Robot Systems

Continuum robots have been utilized for several light-duty applications, such as minimally invasive surgery in the medical field and inspection in the industry. However, the existing design solutions do not offer system stiffness adaptability through a modular attachment. To overcome this disadvantage, in this paper, a low-cost sleeve is developed to ‘rigidize’ an existing continuum robot. The sleeve enables systems to withstand greater torques when undertaking tasks while al-lowing robots’ flexibility to navigate into a confined space. This ‘stiffening sleeve’ is made of heating elements (Nichrome wires) and thermoplastics (polymorph), which have the advantages of low manufacturing costs, simplicity of assembly/disassembly, and universal compatibility with various types of continuum robots. In a further experiment, a small sleeve is demonstrated to decrease the unwanted displacement of a slender continuum robot tip by 20%–69% under a load of 200–450 g.

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