We are proud to showcase a series of cutting-edge developments at the 2024 International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), happening from May 13-17 in Yokohama, Japan. Here’s a glimpse into our contributions:

Monday, May 13, Workshops Reinhard Grassmann presents on our Open Continuum Robotics Project at the workshop on Soft continuum manipulators bottlenecks and applications at 9:35 local time!

Jessica Burgner-Kahrs co-organizes the full-day workshop Continuum and Soft Robotics for Medical Applications, featuring emerging experts in the field. This event will include a presentation by our former PhD student and current postdoc, Dr. Sven Lilge, on Continuum Robot State Estimation Using Gaussian Process Regression, scheduled at 16:10 local time.

Tuesday, May 14, 16:30-18:00, Paper TuCT2-CC.7

Quentin Peyron and Jessica Burgner-Kahrs: Stability Analysis of Tendon Driven Continuum Robots and Application to Active Softening.

Originally published in IEEE Transactions on Robotics, this work establishes a global stability criterion linking critical tendon force to design parameters, utilizing buckling phenomena to enhance robot softening for an optimal balance between compliance and payload capacity.

Wednesday, May 15, 10:30-12:00, Paper WeAT19-NT.1

Reinhard Grassmann, Anastasiia Senyk, and Jessica Burgner-Kahrs: On the Disentanglement of Tube Inequalities in Concentric Tube Continuum Robots.

This ICRA paper introduces a transformational approach with a lower triangular matrix that simplifies complex joint space inequalities into independent box constraints for concentric tube robots.

Thursday, May 16, 10:30-12:00, Paper ThAT10-CC.5

Hanna Zhang, Matthew Giamou, Filip Maric, Jonathan Kelly, and Jessica Burgner-Kahrs: CIDGIKc: Distance-Geometric Inverse Kinematics for Continuum Robots.

Published in IEEE Robotics & Automation Letters, CIDGIKc leverages semidefinite programming and distance-geometric parameterization to address the inverse kinematics challenges in cluttered environments, achieving over 98% success rate.

Late Breaking Results Posters, Tuesday, May 14, 16:30-18:00

  • Paper TuCL-EX.11: Reinhard Grassmann, Anastasiia Senyk, Jessica Burgner-Kahrs: Actuation Constraints in Continuum Robotics Revisited: 2 Dof Manifold and Clarke Transform
  • Paper TuCL-EX.20: Maximilian Hachen, Jimmy Shentu, Sven Lilge, Jessica Burgner-Kahrs: A Non-Linear Model Predictive Task-Space Controller Satisfying Shape Constraints for Tendon-Driven Continuum Robots

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