State of art tutorial for the design and applications of Soft Robotics
Coordinators:
Abdulhalim Dandoush, Ph.D.
CCIT, University of Doha for Science and Technology, Doha, Qatar
Summary:
Soft Robotics is a growing area in the field of robotics. It benefits from the recent achievements in the
design and manufacturing of soft materials to mimic soft bodies by robots with inherited body compliance
and, therefore, increase their safety when they are in close contact with humans. Unlike conventional
studies in robotics, which assume rigid structures connected by a finite number of joints. Meanwhile, in
soft robotics, manipulation, and locomotion tasks are achieved with soft deformable structures that have
an infinite number of joints and do not require a skeleton. Soft robots are made out of highly deformable
materials in order to gain flexibility, robustness, and safety. Despite these features, control and modeling
challenges are imposed. This tutorial introduces recent achievements in soft robotics fabrication,
modeling, and control. The following contents will be covered:
1- Introduction and motivation: what are the benefits of transferring concepts from nature to
robots? Why use soft bodies in robotics? Can we have a robot entirely made of soft materials?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of using soft bodies in robotics?
2- Soft actuators: introduction to different types of soft actuators will be given, such as soft
inflatable structures, cable-driven structures, twisted string structures, and electroadhesive
clutches. A study on how to evaluate the performance of soft actuators using blocked-force
analysis and a study of the Hysteresis of soft actuators will be made on repeated
loading/unloading scenarios. The significant power/weight ratio will also be studied.
3- Soft sensors: a study on the fabrication of different types of soft sensors, such as strain gauge soft
sensors, force soft sensors, and multimodal soft sensors, will be conducted. The gauge factor and
the Hysteresis of soft sensors will be introduced.
4- Soft robotic manipulators: a study on the multisection arrangement of soft actuators and sensors
for building soft manipulators and a spherical soft robotic arm will be made.
5- Forward kinematics of soft robots: methods used to study the kinematics of soft robots will be
given, such as the piecewise constant curvature method, including actuator-specific mapping and
actuator-independent mapping.
6- Inverse kinematics of soft robots: a study on closed-form solutions of soft robots kinematics will
be given.
7- Control of soft robots: the definition of the required control variable for the soft robot and how
these variables are changed over time to generate the desired motion will be introduced. Model-
based control methods will be extensively studied.
Previous knowledge expected:
C/C++ programming skills. Matrix transformation.
Audience:
Bachelor students, master, PhD, and post-docs.
Objectives (Acquired Competences):
Through the tutorial, the audience will acquire a comprehensive understanding of the state-of-the-art soft
robots, achievements, and challenges. Through the tutorials, they will be able to reproduce state-of-the-
art soft robot designs and even propose their solutions to deal with challenges. They will be able to
modulate and control soft robots using known modulation methods for soft robots from the literature.
Materials:
Recommended Reading:
[Tacca, Nassour et al. 2022] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12984-022-01098-0
[Tacca, Nassour et al. 2023] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/10123906
[Erjiage, Nassour et al. 2023] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/10122031
[Nassour et al. 2021] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-91702-5
[Nassour et al. 2020] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9115656
[Nassour et al. 2020] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9149938
[Nassour 2019] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0924424719301207
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14543
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15651-9
Registration:
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