连续型机器人是一种新型的仿生机器人,采用“无脊椎”的柔性结构,不具有任何离散关节和刚性连杆.其弯曲性能优良,对障碍物众多的非结构环境和工作空间狭小的受限工作环境适应能力强,不仅可以像传统机器人那样在其末端安装执行器以实虮抓取和夹持等动作,还可以利用其整个机器人本体实现对物体的抓取.本文对连续型机器人的仿生原理与结构特点进行了分析,介绍了连续型机器人的研究现状,并对其潜在应用领域和未来研究工作进行了探讨和展望.
As a novel biologically inspired robot, the continuum robot features a kind of flexible "invertebrate" backbone with no discrete joint and rigid link. The continuum robot has excellent bending ability, good adaptability to unstructured and highly congested environments. It not only can grasp or grip object with the end-effector attached at the end of the robot, like traditional robots, but also can grasp object by using whole ann manipulation. In this paper, the bionics principles and structure characteristics of continuum robot are analyzed, the present research state of the continuum robot is reviewed, the potential application is foreseen, and the problems needing further research are discussed.