Dynamically Efficient Kinematics for Hyper-Redundant Manipulators

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel dynamic modeling approach for hyper-redundant robotic arms that allows online structural changes, reducing computational costs and enhancing robustness, demonstrated through simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a meta-controlling function enabling dynamic reconfiguration of hyper-redundant manipulators for improved efficiency and robustness.

Findings

Reduces computational cost for complex tasks

Enables online structural reconfiguration

Demonstrates robustness in simulations

Abstract

A hyper-redundant robotic arm is a manipulator with many degrees of freedom, capable of executing tasks in cluttered environments where robotic arms with fewer degrees of freedom are unable to operate. This paper introduces a new method for modeling those manipulators in a completely dynamic way. The proposed method enables online changes of the kinematic structure with the use of a special function; termed "meta-controlling function". This function can be used to develop policies to reduce drastically the computational cost for a single task, and to robustly control the robotic arm, even in the event of partial damage. The direct and inverse kinematics are solved for a generic three-dimensional articulated hyper-redundant arm, that can be used as a proof of concept for more specific structures. To demonstrate the robustness of our method, experimental simulation results, for a basic "meta-controlling" function, are presented.