Automated Design of FDM-Printable Snake-Like Compliant Mechanisms With Predefined End-Effector Poses

High prices and complex control are still an inhibitor to the wider use of robotic systems. Additive Manufacturing in combination with automated design, on the one hand, enables the low-cost production of robots and mechanism and, on the other hand, creates new possibilities for fabricating innovative systems, such as continuum robots and compliant mechanisms. The problem thereby is not the manufacturing itself but the design of the necessary individual models specified for certain additive manufacturing processes, which is complex and needs expert knowledge. This work deals with the design of snake-like compliant mechanisms and proposes an automated framework to design mechanisms for specified end-effector poses. Using rolling-contact flexure joints designed for fused deposition modeling (FDM) 3D printing, flexible segments are developed, which can be assembled to form a task-specific mechanism. Only with the specification of the end-effector configurations and few geometric boundary conditions all surface models for printing this mechanism with FDM are generated automatically. Furthermore, an approach to improve the accuracy of these mechanisms, regardless of the used 3D printer, is presented.