Tendon-Driven Continuum Robot Systems with only A Single Motor and A Radius-Changing Pulley

Abstract

Continuum robots are utilized in various fields, such as surgical catheters, and used to assist human muscular strength. To make continuum robots more practical, it is essential to miniaturize or reduce their weights. For tendon-driven robots, the weight of motors is the most important factor to be concerned. Accordingly, we suggest a method to control the tendon-driven continuum robot with a single motor to lighten the weight, which needed more than two motors. However, it is difficult to control the tendon-driven robots with one motor to track the desired trajectory as the lengths of two or more tendons change when the shape of the tendon-driven robot changes. To overcome this issue, we designed a radius-variable pulley, using which the required lengths for respective tendons can be achieved when only a single motor is operating.