Shape Analysis and Control of a Continuum Objects*

Soft robots are a hot spot in today's robotic research, because most of them exist in the form of continuums, and the current continuum is difficult to recognize the shape and reproduce the corresponding shape. In this paper, we propose a method, in which the shape features of the flexible continuum are obtained by contour centerline extraction and binocular camera reconstruction and the modeling of the relationship between the motor input and the shape output of the continuum is completed using neural networks. Simulation environment is set up to test the shape estimation and shape control of the flexible continuum. Results show that this method can prediction and reproduce the shape of the continuum well. This method can be used in shape control of the continuum robot.