Control of elastic soft robots based on real-time finite element method

By Christian Duriez. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2013

314 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In this paper, we present a new method for the control of soft robots with elastic behavior, piloted by several actuators. The central contribution of this work is the use of the Finite Element Method (FEM), computed in real-time, in the control algorithm. The FEM based simulation computes the nonlinear deformations of the robots at interactive rates. The model is completed by Lagrange multipliers at the actuation zones and at the end-effector position. A reduced compliance matrix is built in order to deal with the necessary inversion of the model. Then, an iterative algorithm uses this compliance matrix to find the contribution of the actuators (force and/or position) that will deform the structure so that the terminal end of the robot follows a given position. Additional constraints, like rigid or deformable obstacles, or the internal characteristics of the actuators are integrated in the control algorithm. We illustrate our method using simulated examples of both serial and parallel structures and we validate it on a real 3D soft robot made of silicone.

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3529296b006c4cda0d19182390f2a2b44bca0fc0

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Citations in the corpus

Mechanically Versatile Soft Machines through Laminar Jamming (2018, background): “Because modeling and sensing is more complex for soft machines, control is inherently more difficult[28].”
Soft Robots Manufacturing: A Review (2018, background): “The control of soft robots is also a very open challenge, and it has to be acknowledged that modeling soft device for realtime control is currently at a very early stage in spite of noticeable contributions (Duriez, 2013; Coevoet et al., 2017).”
Soft Manipulators and Grippers: A Review (2016, methodology): “Duriez, C. (2013). “Control of elastic soft robots based on real-time finite element method,” in Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2013 IEEE International Conference on (Karlsruhe: IEEE), 3982–3987.”
Three-Dimensional Dynamics for Cable-Driven Soft Manipulator (2017, methodology): “Lagrange multipliers were used at the actuation zones as well as the end-effector position in their model [6].”