Sampling-Based Follow-the-Leader Motion Planning for Manipulator-Mounted Continuum Robots

2026-05-12

AI Summary

This work addresses the limitations of existing Follow-the-Leader motion planning approaches, which typically assume a fixed base or single-degree-of-freedom insertion and thus struggle with continuum robots mounted on six-degree-of-freedom fully actuated manipulators. To overcome this, the authors propose a sampling-based planning method that decouples global shape exploration from base pose determination. The approach leverages closed-form geometric constructions to efficiently compute feasible base poses online, is compatible with general forward kinematic models, and employs a separation between offline and online computation. The method offers theoretical guarantees of resolution completeness in shape space and asymptotic convergence of end-effector tracking. Evaluated on 120 simulated paths, it achieves 100% success rate, zero end-effector error, and an average shape deviation of 1.9% relative to robot length, with experimental validation on a six-degree-of-freedom tendon-driven continuum robot platform.

Abstract

Follow-the-leader (FTL) motion exploits the unique morphology of continuum robots (CRs) to navigate confined spaces by having the body retrace the path of the tip. While extensively studied, existing FTL methods typically assume a fixed base or a single degree-of-freedom insertion mechanism, limiting their applicability to practical systems in which CRs are mounted on robotic manipulators with fully actuated SE(3) base pose. This paper presents a sampling-based motion planner for FTL motion of manipulator-mounted CRs that jointly considers robot configuration and base pose. The key idea is to decouple global shape search from base pose determination by computing the base pose through a closed-form geometric construction, thereby avoiding iterative optimization during online planning. The approach supports general forward models and enables efficient planning by shifting the majority of computation offline. We establish theoretical guarantees including resolution complete shape search and converging tip tracking throughout waypoint traversal and interpolation. Experiments on 120 simulated paths over 3 test classes demonstrate 0% tip error and 1.9% mean shape deviation (w.r.t. robot length) at 100% success rate. We validate the practicality of our approach on a 6-DOF tendon-driven CR mounted on a serial manipulator. Code and visualization available at https://continuumroboticslab.github.io/sb-ftl-cr-planner/.

Problem

• continuum robots
• follow-the-leader motion
• manipulator-mounted
• motion planning
• SE(3) base pose

Innovation

• sampling-based planning
• follow-the-leader
• continuum robots
• manipulator-mounted
• closed-form base pose