Expeditious Design Optimization of a Concentric Tube Robot with a Heat-shrink Plastic Tube

Abstract

Design optimization and fabrication of concentric tube robots are time consuming because of the complexity of their workspaces and the characteristics of the superelastic materials used to make them. This paper presents a procedure for the expeditious design and fabrication of a concentric tube robot for applications that require rapid tube preparation but have less complex design constraints. This procedure reduces a 3D workspace optimization problem to a 2D problem. The continuum robot includes a heat-shrink tube to reduce fabrication time and to give it a small radius of curvature. Experimental results illustrate the feasibility of the proposed procedure.