Abstract: Continuum robot is a new class of biologically inspired robot with good compliance and high dexterity. In contrast to traditional discrete robot such as serial robot or parallel robot, this class of flexible “invertebrate” robot features a continuous backbone with no rigid joints and links, thus its kinematic analysis can’t be realized by the conventional D-H approach. Based on the analysis of the differences between continuum robot and discrete robot, a novel and simplified kinematics for cable-driven continuum robot is presented with geometric analysis method, the mapping relationships among simple joint drive space, joint space and operation space are analyzed, and the three-dimentional workspace is introduced. In view of the coupling influences between the joints of cable-driven robot, the decoupling kinematics of cable-driven continuum robot is deduced. The simulation of end position and length of cables and the prototype experiments are carried out to verify the correctness of kinematics algorithm and to show the motion performances.

Key words: Biologically inspired robot, Cable driven, Continuum robot, Kinematics