Recent Developments of Actuation Mechanisms for Continuum Robots: A Review

Traditional rigid robots face significant challenges in congested and tight environments, including bulky size, maneuverability, and safety limitations. Thus, soft continuum robots, inspired by the incredible capabilities of biological appendages such as octopus arms, starfish, and worms, have shown promising performance in complex environments due to their compliance, adaptability, and safety. Different actuation techniques are implemented in soft continuum robots to achieve a smoothly bending backbone, including cable-driven actuators, pneumatic actuators, and hydraulic actuation systems. However, designing and developing efficient actuation mechanisms, motion planning approaches, and control algorithms are challenging due to the high degree of redundancy and non-linearity of soft continuum robots. This article profoundly reviews the merits and drawbacks of soft robots’ actuation systems concerning their applications to provide the readers with a brief review reference to explore the recent development of soft robots’ actuation mechanisms technology. Moreover, the authors have surveyed the recent review studies in controller design of continuum robots as a guidance for future applications.