Design and Validation of a Tendon-Driven Continuum Robot with a Shape-Memory Alloy Backbone

Continuum robots, with their flexible backbones, can navigate tortuous passages and complex, narrow geometries that no other robot can reach, enabling intervention in extreme environments as well as minimally invasive surgery. Their dexterity, however, is usually limited to two bending degrees of freedom per body segment; specific designs can achieve elongation through additional motors and/or complex designs, improving dexterity and follow-the-lead navigation capabilities but reducing scalability and robustness. In this paper, we propose a novel solution to actuate elongation by exploiting the shape-memory properties of a Nickel-Titanium backbone, with a simple but effective design that improves dexterity without compromising on complexity or bulk. After describing robot operation, we demonstrate our idea with a preliminary prototype and evaluate its kinematic performance.