Hybrid Approach for Modeling and Solving of Kinematics of a Compact Bionic Handling Assistant Manipulator

This paper deals with a methodology for real-time solving of a complex kinematics of a class of continuum manipulators, namely the compact bionic handling assistant (CBHA). First, a quantitative approach is used to model kinematically the CBHA inspired from the modeling of parallel rigid manipulators. For this case, the CBHA is modeled as a series of vertebrae, where each vertebra is connected to the next one through a flexible link. The latter named an intervertebra is modeled by three universal-prismatic-spherical and one universal-prismatic joints. The kinematic models of the CBHA are derived from the inverse kinematic equations (IKE) of each intervertebra. A qualitative approach based on neural networks is used to provide approximated solutions of the IKE for real-time implementation. Thus, the combination of the advantages of quantitative and qualitative approaches allows proposing a hybrid methodology for accurate modeling and solving the kinematics of this class of continuum robots. A set of experiments is conducted using a CBHA in order to evaluate the level of efficiency of the proposed hybrid approach.