Continuum Robot Design and Prototyping
At CRL, we create innovative continuum robot designs with novel features such as drastically increased motion capabilities through extensibility, adjustable stiffness through scale sheaths, and higher accuracy through parallel structures.
In terms of designing continuum robots a wide spectrum of compliance and elasticity can be achieved by variation of
materials, structure, actuation, etc. We aim at developing particularly small continuum robots which are able to
manoeuvre and manipulate in constrained and tortuous environments.
In addition to the physical design of continuum robots, research @CRL is also concerned with computational design. For instance, we are developing evolutionary algorithms and machine learning techniques to explore the infinite parameter space of tubular continuum robots and derive design guidelines.
Funding
- NSERC Discovery Accelerator Supplements
- Canada Foundation for Innovation, John R. Evans Leaders Fund
- Ontario Research Fund, Research Infrastructure
Publications
Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 9:873446 (19 pages), 2022.
4th IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics (RoboSoft), 2021.
IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 6 (2), pp. 1272 - 1279, 2021.
International Journal of Robotics Research, 40 (1), pp. 7-23, 2021.
PhD Thesis, Leibniz University Hannover, 2019.
Soft Robotics, 5 (3), pp. 291-303, 2018.
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pp. 6470–6476, 2017.
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pp. 4666-4672, 2017.
DGR Days (German Society of Robotics), pp. 20, 2017.
Journal of Medical Devices, 11 (1), pp. 014501 (9 pages), 2017.
16th Annual Meeting of the German Society for Computer- and Robot-assisted Surgery, pp. 125–130, 2017.
Latest Thinking, ISSN; 25105183., 2017.
Journal of Medical Robotics Research, 2 (1), pp. 1750004 (9 pages), 2017.
28th Conference of the international Society for Medical Innovation and Technology, 2016.
IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 31 (6), pp. 1261-1280, 2015.