{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.01814300960512273, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0, 'mean_word_length': 5.652482269503546, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Collision Free Path Planning for Multi-Section Continuum Manipulators Based on a Modal Method

Continuum manipulators have excellent flexibility and compliance, making them useful for operations in unstructured environments such as minimally invasive surgeries and on-orbit service. However, planning motions to avoid obstacles for these manipulators, especially those with redundant degrees of freedom, is challenging due to the complex kinematics. In this paper, a collision free path planning algorithm is proposed for multi-section continuum manipulators. The classical modal approach for hyper-redundant arms is modified to make it applicable for continuum manipulators' constant curvature kinematics model. The contribution of this work lies in a novel fitting method to achieve obstacle avoidance when tip moves along spatial paths. The algorithm is validated by simulations of a five-section arm moving in clustered environments.