Contact-Aided Navigation of Tendon-driven Continuum Robots
What if we moved away from the classical obstacle avoidance paradigm in robotics and allowed continuum robots to leverage contact with the environments?
Welcome to the Open Continuum Robotics Blog!
The blog features entry level educational content, advanced research results, historical perspectives, hands-on projects, resources, as well as opinions on continuum robotics.
Recent Posts
Algorithmic Motion Planning Meets Minimally-Invasive Robotic Surgery - Part 2
A Case Study of Inspection Using the CRISP Robot In certain medical applications, physicians may want to inspect some region of interest for diagnostic purpo...
Algorithmic Motion Planning Meets Minimally-Invasive Robotic Surgery
A Case Study of Steerable Needles Steerable needles are a type of continuum robot, distinguished by their flexibility and capability to navigate through comp...
Learning Kit for Tendon-driven Continuum Robots
Hi! I am Ankit and I’ve spent my summer 2023 at the CRL developing a learning kit for Tendon Driven Continuum Robots together with Reinhard Grassmann. The le...
Introduction to Motion Planning for Continuum Robots - Part 2
What makes motion planning particularly challenging for continuum robots? How does the continuum robotics community tackle those challenges?
Introduction to Motion Planning for Continuum Robots - Part 1
A quick introduction to motion planning, how to represent the problem, and what methods exist to solve it.
Continuum Robots @ICRA23
A curated list of continuum robotics research presented
One Actuation Module to Create them All
An open actuation module to create your continuum robots. One for all!
Beyond Medical Applications
Opportunities for continuum robotics are largely unexploited, as the medical focus restricts and constrains innovation.
Tendon Routing Disks and their Effects on Motion Primitives
Let’s conceptually think about tendon routing disks. They provide channels to route the tendon actuating a continuum robot.
CRVisToolkit: Visualizing Concentric Tube Continuum Robots
CRVisToolkit now provides utilities to create professional looking plots of concentric tube continuum robots using MATLAB.
A Short History on Concentric Tube Continuum Robots
The first concentric tube continuum robot was published in 2005! And yet, the community usually refers to two papers from 2006 as the first. Why?
Constant-Curvature Modeling of Concentric Tube Continuum Robots
A simple free-space model for CTCR.
Visualizing Tendon-driven Continuum Robots in MATLAB
Launching the CRVisToolkit providing you with utilities to create professional looking plots of tendon-driven continuum robots using MATLAB.
Sensing for Continuum Robots - Part 2
Today, we continue our introduction to sensing the state of a continuum robot. If you have missed Part I of the intro, look at last week’s blog post before y...
The string girdling Earth problem and how it relates to tendon displacement
Students often ask "How much do I need to pull on a tendon?"
Sensing for Continuum Robots - Part 1
Continuum robots must perceive their own position, pose, or full shape, namely proprioception, and be able to feel external stimuli, namely exteroception.
Representing the Backbone of Tendon-driven Continuum Robots using Euler Curves
Euler curves are a more powerful representation than constant curvature arcs to represent the shape of a continuum robot.
Getting Started on a Model for Tendon-driven Continuum Robots
We outline three major steps to designing the right model for a tenon-driven continuum robot for your purposes.
2022 - That’s a wrap
A recap of the highlights of the year for the Open Continuum Robotics Project.
State Estimation using Gaussian Process Regression
In today’s blogpost, we are turning to the problem of state estimation for continuum robots. While the modeling of continuum robots, which was covered by se...
Constant-Curvature Model of Tendon-driven Continuum Robots
Modeling of tendon-driven continuum robots using the constant-curvature kinematics framework.
Continuum Robotics goes Poetry
Continuum robots, oh so sleek…
Constant Curvature Kinematics Framework
This kinematics framework is widely used for continuum robots.
Fictional Continuum Robots
Many fiction writers have thought of continuously bendable robots.
Introduction to Modeling
The slender structure of continuously bending robots can be represented by a space curve.
Continuum Robotics Emerges as a Research Field
In the 1990s, continuum robotics research is taken up by more research groups.
Concentric Tube Continuum Robots
The smallest among all continuum robots.
Early Continuum Robots - The 1980s
The 1980s mark the decade which lead to major developments in continuum robot designs!
Tendon-driven Continuum Robots
Tendon-driven continuum robots are the most common type.
Tensor arm
An early continuum robot was driven by cables.
Types of Continuum Robots
Continuum robots can be classified according to the method and location of their actuation.
The First Continuum Robot
The very first continuum robot is named after the Norwegian term for snake.
Motion Primitives
What are the motion capabilities of a continuum robot?
Open-source Modeling Dataset
The first public dataset for a concentric tube continuum robot to democrotize research on their learning-based and physics-based modeling.
Continuum Robotics 101
We are starting our 101 blog post series. In this category, we will present introductory concepts in continuum robotics targeted at novices who have prior kn...
Continuum Robots @IROS22
A curated list of continuum robotics research presented @IROS22.
Open Continuum Robotics Project
What is the open continuum robotics project?