title: Grasping with a soft glove: intrinsic impedance control in pneumatic actuators.
abstract: The interaction of a robotic manipulator with unknown soft objects represents a significant challenge for traditional robotic platforms because of the difficulty in controlling the grasping force between a soft object and a stiff manipulator. Soft robotic actuators inspired by elephant trunks, octopus limbs and muscular hydrostats are suggestive of ways to overcome this fundamental difficulty. In particular, the large intrinsic compliance of soft manipulators such as 'pneu-nets'-pneumatically actuated elastomeric structures-makes them ideal for applications that require interactions with an uncertain mechanical and geometrical environment. Using a simple theoretical model, we show how the geometric and material nonlinearities inherent in the passive mechanical response of such devices can be used to grasp soft objects using force control, and stiff objects using position control, without any need for active sensing or feedback control. Our study is suggestive of a general principle for designing actuators with autonomous intrinsic impedance control.
authors.affiliation: School of Engineering, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 3GH, UK.
authors.forename: P
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-6131-0377
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Paoletti
authors.affiliation: School of Mathematics, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK.
authors.forename: G W
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-6218-0367
authors.initials: GW
authors.lastname: Jones
authors.affiliation: Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA lm@seas.harvard.edu.|Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.|Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.|Kavli Institute for NanoBio Science and Technology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
authors.forename: L
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-5114-0519
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Mahadevan
mesh_terms: D008962:Models, Theoretical; D012371:Robotics
keywords: bioinspired design; grasping; impedance control; soft robotics