Modelling and Control of self healing soft robots with SOFA

Description

The complexity of the materials used in soft robotics, revealed the need for accurate models, required to develop advanced control strategies. In this paper, a specific material with the self-healing property is considered. This material can recover from macroscopic damages after undergoing a heat treatment without losing its mechanical performances. In this article, an accurate characterisation of the mechanical behaviour of the material is provided, involving mechanical testing both intensile and compression. On this experimental characterisation,data constitutive laws are fitted, by using a FEA simulator. Then, with the obtained constitutive model,a SOFA simulation of the bending soft pneumatic actuator is developed. The simulation results are experimentally validated with a dedicated test bench consisting in a pressure control unit and a motion tracking camera. After the validation, an invers ekinematic control is developed, including the SOFA in the control scheme.

Period	23 Nov 2021
Held at	Université de Strasbourg, France
Degree of Recognition	International