Kinematic Modelling of Origami-Inspired Continuum Robotic Arm by Constant-Curvature Elements

Origami, as a paper folding art and Japanese culture, has been utilized broadly in engineering areas. The exclusive features of origami such as negative Poisson’s ration, lightweight, deployable and so forth, can be considered in the design of deployable space structures, expandable shelters, drug delivery, and robots. In this study, firstly, the continuum robot with six serial modules of origami parallel structure as its skeleton and the helical springs as the compliant backbone is studied, and constant curvature kinematics was implemented in order to simplify and approximate the kinematic model. Accordingly, the kinematic model of one module was derived. Then, the robot kinematics was obtained as a series of mentioned modules. Furthermore, the proposed continuum robot was modeled by an equivalent mechanism, and a comparison was conducted between the methods to obtain a workspace. Based on the results, the modeling of the equivalent mechanism has an advantage in terms of calculation's volume compared to the constant curvature method and the workspace obtained from both methods was the same. The Jacobian matrix was obtained through the constant curvature approximation methods, which can be considered for singularity analysis in specific conditions and the analysis reveals that the singularities occur when the curve and radius are equal and symmetry is created and the other is when the radius is equivalent to zero. The paper concludes a perspective on several of the themes of current research that are shaping the future of origami-inspired robotics.