A hybrid continuum robot design is introduced that combines a proximal tendon-actuated section with a distal telescoping section comprised of permanent-magnet spheres actuated using an external magnet. While, individually, each section can approach a point in its workspace from one or at most several orientations, the two-section combination possesses a dexterous workspace. The paper describes kinematic modeling of the hybrid design and provides a description of the dexterous workspace. We present experimental validation which shows that a simplified kinematic model produces tip position mean and maximum errors of 3% and 7% of total robot length, respectively.

翻译：本文提出了一种混合连续体机器人设计，该设计结合了近端肌腱驱动段与远端伸缩段——后者由永磁球体通过外部磁体驱动构成。尽管每个独立段只能从一种或最多几种方向接近其工作空间中的某一目标点，但两段组合却拥有灵巧的操作空间。本文描述了混合设计的运动学建模，并提供了灵巧工作空间的特性分析。实验验证表明，简化运动学模型产生的末端位置平均误差和最大误差分别占机器人总长度的3%和7%。