Sensing of Continuum Robots: A Review

The field of continuum robotics is rapidly developing. The development of new kinematic structures, locomotion principles and control strategies is driving the development of new types of sensors and sensing methodologies. The sensing in continuum robots can be divided into shape perception and environment perception. The environment perception is focusing on sensing the interactions between the robot and environment. These sensors are often embedded on an outer layer of the robots, so the interactions can be detected. The shape perception is sensing the robot’s shape using various principles. There are three main groups of sensors that use the properties of electricity, magnetism and optics to measure the shape of the continuum robots. The sensors based on measuring the properties of electricity are often based on measuring the electrical resistance or capacitance of the flexible sensor. Sensors based on magnetism use properties of permanent magnets or coils that are attached to the robot. Their magnetic field, flux or other properties are then tracked, and shape reconstruction can be performed. The last group of sensors is mostly based on leveraging the properties of traveling light through optical fibers. There are multiple objectives of this work. Objective number one is to clearly categorize the sensors and make a clear distinction between them. Objective number two is to determine the trend and progress of the sensors used in continuum robotics. And finally, the third objective is to define the challenges that the researchers are currently facing. The challenges of sensing the shape or the interaction with the environment of continuum robots are currently in the miniaturization of existing sensors and the development of novel sensing methods.