Teleoperation Control Design with Virtual Force Feedback for the Cable-Driven Hyper-Redundant Continuum Manipulator

Abstract

Hyper-redundant continuum manipulators present dexterous kinematic skills in complicated tasks and demonstrate promising potential in underground exploration, intra-cavity inspection, surgery, etc. However, the hyper-redundancy, which endows much dexterity and flexibility, brings a huge challenge to the kinematics solution and control of the continuum manipulators. Due to the pseudoinverse calculation of high-order Jacobian matrix or iteration, many inverse kinematic solution approaches of continuum manipulators are very time-consuming, which extremely limit their applicability in real-time control. Additionally, it is often difficult for the manipulators to perform the tasks well in complex scenarios due to lack of human intervention. Therefore, in this paper, a simplified kinematics model of a typical hyper-redundant manipulator is proposed based on its unique geometry relationships, where the mapping relationships between the actuators’ rotation and the end-effector’s position are derived through the analysis of its driving subsystem and motion subsystem, in particular the joint modules. To perform the tasks of manipulators with the help of operators, a teleoperation control scheme with modified wave transmission structure is designed to achieve the guaranteed stability and improved transparency, and the leader’s trajectory and generated force feedback are the transmitted signals in the communication channel. Specifically, a virtual force feedback generation algorithm is developed in the teleoperation control scheme via the processing tracking errors, which can improve the operators’ assistance and perception during the teleoperation process. The practical experiments with comparative wave variable structures in two different sets are implemented to verify the effectiveness of proposed kinematics model and control scheme.