Design of a hyper-redundant continuum manipulator for intra-cavity tasks

Slim and strong hyper-redundant manipulators with long reaches can perform a variety of intra-cavity tasks in confined spaces. Benefiting from a newly developed continuum mechanism and its actuation scheme, this paper proposes the design of a hyper-redundant continuum manipulator with 12 DoFs (Degrees of Freedom). With a structure synthesized in an enumerative manner, the manipulator is expected to navigate through arrays of holes to perform inspections or manipulations at remote locations in a deep cavity. Kinematics modeling, simulations, and system descriptions are elaborated. A prototype is to be constructed to experimentally verify the proposed functions of the proposed continuum manipulator.