Model-based static compliance analysis and control for pneumatic-driven soft robots
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Elastomer-based soft manipulators have been explored in various fields due to their inherent compliant properties. Understanding and regulation of robot's compliance are important to the design, modeling, and control of soft robots. However, the elastomers are nonlinear hyperelastic materials with distributed compliance. This property makes the compliance modeling and control of soft robots fundamentally different and more complex from their rigid counterparts. This article presents a neo-Hookean model-based compliance modeling and control approach to investigate and regulate the configuration-dependent compliance property of a pneumatic-driven soft manipulator. The neo-Hookean model is used to derive the stretch ratio and update the tangent modulus of materials. The robot's compliance is obtained by integration with the forward kinematics building on the static Cosserat rod model. The derived compliance matrix is utilized to regulate robot's compliance along the x-, y-, and z-axes. Computational and experimental validation demonstrate high fidelity of the proposed approach. Moreover, experiments illustrate that the exhibited robot's compliance can be regulated up to 49.5% higher or 34.2% lower compared to inherent robot's compliance. The proposed model-based compliance control strategy has also demonstrated its effectiveness in enhancing grasping ability when implemented on a soft gripper.
Date Issued
2025-12-01
Date Acceptance
2025-03-18
Citation
IEEE-ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, 2025, 30 (6), pp.5567-5578
ISSN
1083-4435
Publisher
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Start Page
5567
End Page
5578
Journal / Book Title
IEEE-ASME Transactions on Mechatronics
Volume
30
Issue
6
Copyright Statement
Copyright © 2025 IEEE. This is the author’s accepted manuscript made available under a CC-BY licence in accordance with Imperial’s Research Publications Open Access policy (www.imperial.ac.uk/oa-policy)
License URL
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2025-04-09