Design and Analysis of a Dexterous Gripper Based on Flexible Parallel Continuum Manipulator

A new four-degree-of-freedom parallel continuum manipulator is presented, which was combined with a cable-driven gripper to improve the performance of dexterous grasp. This manipulator is approximately equivalent to the traditional rigid link parallel mechanism by complaint branch equivalent method, and the degree of freedom analysis of the manipulator is performed by using the screw theory. The classic Cosserat Rod model is applied to model the kinematics of the continuum manipulator. By comparative analysis among three types of parallel continuum manipulator, the proposed manipulator can provide an additional torsional movement which make the gripper grasp the object more flexibly. Based on this, a simulation example of dexterous grasp is given. Finally, experiments verify the degree of freedom and kinematics of the manipulator and the performance of flexible grasping of the gripper.