The Cosserat rod is a model which is often used in the soft robotics community. Considering that it has more deformation modes than most other rod models, the Cosserat rod can be used to accurately simulate the behaviour soft robotic systems which are build up from this model. However, in order to use the model for simulation, certain discretization choices have to be made.
In this presentation, I will discuss how the kinematics and dynamics are formulated for this model and will speak about how choices in formulating the reduced model and discretization influence the energetic behaviour of the rod.