Enabling the control of a new degree of freedom by using anisotropic material on a 6-DOF parallel soft robot

F. Vanneste, O. Goury and C. Duriez.

IEEE RoboSoft 2021, Pdf, Video

Abstract

In this paper, we design in simulation and build a parallel soft robot with a 6 degrees of freedom (DOF) end-effector. We show that by using a 3D-printed meso-structured material which displays an anisotropic behaviour, we can modify the kinematics of the structure in order to control one additional DOF which is not possible to achieve using a standard isotropic and homogeneous material like silicone. The behaviour of the robot is simulated using numerical homogenization and the finite element method (FEM), which runs in real-time and can be used for control. We finally show that the parallel soft robot we have built is controllable in open loop thanks to the use of inverse simulation. We demonstrate its maneuverability by guiding a marble in a maze game.

Vidéo