Empirical investigation of closed-loop control of extensible continuum manipulators

This paper details closed-loop control experiments that were conducted on an extensible continuum manipulator, the OctArm. The performance of three controllers are shown here. The controllers can be classified into two categories: Closed-loop configuration-space control and closed-loop task-space teleoperation. Two controllers were tested in the configuration-space control experiments: a proportional-derivative (PD) controller and a nonlinear sliding-mode controller. The third controller is also shown in which the redundant extensible continuum manipulator tip tracks the motion of a kinematically-dissimilar non-redundant rigid-link master system. The results of these experiments confirm the ability of the control strategies to effectively control continuum robot hardware.