Continuum manipulators are high degree of freedom structures that can use their increased degrees of freedom to navigate through an environment with obstacles. This type of manipulator is underactuated, which make them promising for adapting to their environments. However, current research is mainly focused on accurate positioning and obstacle avoidance, while the advantages of underactuated systems remain unused. Therefore this paper proposes a new design and approach of a continuum manipulator, which can navigate through an environment with obstacles by passively shaping the manipulator along the obstacles. The proposed design consists of a sequence of crosslink segments, where steering is done by an antagonistic pair of tendons and forward movement is done by a single pushing force at the base of the manipulator. Analytical models and a prototype show that this manipulator has a highly increased range of motion per segment compared with similar systems. The results also show that the manipulator is able to reach a target in a multi-obstacle environment using a simple binary control system with low input forces.@en

Hyper redundant manipulators are robotic arms with many degrees of freedom. This allows them to navigate through a changing environment filled with objects. In this paper a new design for a hyper redundant manipulator is proposed. It makes use of underactuation and compliance to solve two problems, the path planning of the manipulator and the friction in the system. The proposed design consists of five segments. Each segment is a compliant cross axis flexure joint with four flexures. The proposed design is compared with a hyper redundant manipulator that also includes underactuation but is not compliant. It was found that compliance increases the range of motion and decreases the bending stiffness of the total manipulator while decreasing the lateral stiffness.@en