Contact-Aware Planning and Control of Continuum Robots in Highly Constrained Environments
Fuente:
arXiv
Saved in:
| Main Authors: | , , , , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2026
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| _version_ | 1866917415824130048 |
|---|---|
| author | Mangan, Aedan Long, Kehan Lee, Ki Myung Brian Potdar, Miheer Atanasov, Nikolay Morimoto, Tania K. |
| author_facet | Mangan, Aedan Long, Kehan Lee, Ki Myung Brian Potdar, Miheer Atanasov, Nikolay Morimoto, Tania K. |
| contents | Continuum robots are well suited for navigating confined and fragile environments, such as vascular or endoluminal anatomy, where contact with surrounding structures is often unavoidable. While controlled contact can assist motion, unfavorable contact can degrade controllability, induce kinematic singularities, or introduce safety risks. We present a contact-aware planning approach that evaluates contact quality, penalizing hazardous interactions, while permitting benign contact. The planner produces kinematically feasible trajectories and contact-aware Jacobians which can be used for closed-loop control in hardware experiments. We validate the approach by testing the integrated system (planning, control, and mechanical design) on anatomical models from patient scans. The planner generates effective plans for three common anatomical environments, and, in all hardware trials, the continuum robot was able to reach the target while avoiding dangerous tip contact (100% success). Mean tracking errors were 1.9 +/- 0.5 mm, 1.2 +/- 0.1 mm, and 1.7 +/- 0.2 mm across the three different environments. Ablation studies showed that penalizing end-of-continuum-segment (ECS) contact improved manipulability and prevented hardware failures. Overall, this work enables reliable, contact-aware navigation in highly constrained environments. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_15638 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Contact-Aware Planning and Control of Continuum Robots in Highly Constrained Environments Mangan, Aedan Long, Kehan Lee, Ki Myung Brian Potdar, Miheer Atanasov, Nikolay Morimoto, Tania K. Robotics Systems and Control Optimization and Control Continuum robots are well suited for navigating confined and fragile environments, such as vascular or endoluminal anatomy, where contact with surrounding structures is often unavoidable. While controlled contact can assist motion, unfavorable contact can degrade controllability, induce kinematic singularities, or introduce safety risks. We present a contact-aware planning approach that evaluates contact quality, penalizing hazardous interactions, while permitting benign contact. The planner produces kinematically feasible trajectories and contact-aware Jacobians which can be used for closed-loop control in hardware experiments. We validate the approach by testing the integrated system (planning, control, and mechanical design) on anatomical models from patient scans. The planner generates effective plans for three common anatomical environments, and, in all hardware trials, the continuum robot was able to reach the target while avoiding dangerous tip contact (100% success). Mean tracking errors were 1.9 +/- 0.5 mm, 1.2 +/- 0.1 mm, and 1.7 +/- 0.2 mm across the three different environments. Ablation studies showed that penalizing end-of-continuum-segment (ECS) contact improved manipulability and prevented hardware failures. Overall, this work enables reliable, contact-aware navigation in highly constrained environments. |
| title | Contact-Aware Planning and Control of Continuum Robots in Highly Constrained Environments |
| topic | Robotics Systems and Control Optimization and Control |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.15638 |