Andrea Bajo successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation on 3/15/2013. His dissertation titled " Control, Sensing, and Telemanipulation of Surgical Continuum Robots" presents contributions in the areas of contact detection and estimation of contact location for continuum robots, hybrid force/motion control for continuum robots, and constrained telemanipulation of continuum robots. Algorithms de...

Traditionally, robot manipulators have been a simple arrangement of a small number of serially connected links and actuated joints. Though these manipulators prove to be very effective for many tasks, they are not without their limitations, due mainly to their lack of maneuverability or total degrees of freedom. Continuum style (i.e., continuous "back-bone") robots, on the other hand, exhibit a...

Current multi-backbone continuum robots are limited to a constant cross-sectional diameter. This paper proposes a design alternative that overcomes this limitation. The ability to change the diameter of a continuum robot expands the repertoire of kinematic redundancy and enables kinematic parameter adaptation to optimize performance. A continuum robot design based on the angulated scissor mecha...

Continuum robots have excited increasing attention and effort from robotic community due to their high dexterity and safety. This paper designs a continuum robot equipped with an elastic backbone structure and tendon-driven system. The kinematic model of such robot is formulated and a novel approach to analyze the workspace is developed by identifying the interference between the backbone struc...

–The investigation of continuum robots has become an area of considerable interest in the last several years. Unlike conventional robotic manipulators which bend in discrete locations, continuum robots bend over continuous sections. One of the main issues that is hampering research in this area is the determination of the robot’s shape. In this paper we present a shape-determining scheme that i...

We describe the design, construction, and operation of a novel continuous backbone “continuum” robot. Inspired by biological trunks and tentacles, the robot is actuated by the pneumatic muscles which form its structure. In contrast to previous designs, the actuators are contractor muscles, which decrease in length as pressure is increased. This choice of actuator results in novel and improved p...

Abstract Continuum robots can enter narrow spaces and are useful for search rescue missions in disaster sites. The exploration efficiency at sites improves if the simultaneously acquire several pieces of information. However, a continuum robot that information to such an extent has not yet been designed. This is because attaching multiple sensors without compromising its body flexibility challe...

Continuum robots do not contain rigid links and identifiable rotational joints. Their structure bend continuously along their length via elastic deformation and produce motion through the generation of smooth curves, similar to the tentacles or tongues of the animal kingdom. One technique to construct lightweight continuum devices with many degrees of freedom is to utilize remote actuation, and...