Adaptation of Translated Frame-Based Approach for Forward Kinematics in a Radiosurgical Snake-Like Robot

Snake-like robots are a typical serial-link manipulator newly adopted to assist human experts during medical procedures. Of the several prototypes that have been proposed for surgical repair of abdominal organs and delivery of radiation doses, only a very few attained FDA clearance and commercialization for clinical usage. This can be ascribed to complexities inherent with teleoperation of the redundant robots when controlled via single-ports or interactions with other organs both along the surgical path and the operation area. In this study, translated frame-based approach is adapted for forward kinematics of snake-like robots that have orthogonal joints. This is realized by modifying the conventional standard DH approach commonly used for frame translation in serial robots. The adapted method is validated with model of a newly proposed radiosurgical snake-like robot. Validation results show that adapted method requires reduced execution times for both workspace generation and inverse kinematics of the snake robot.