2022 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)
Abstract. Soft robots have drawn great interest due to their ability to take on a rich range of shapes and motions, compared to traditional rigid robots. However, the motions, and underlying statics and dynamics, pose significant challenges to forming well-generalized and robust models necessary for robot design and control. In this work, we demonstrate a five-actuator soft robot capable of complex motions and develop a scalable simulation framework that reliably predicts robot motions. The simulation framework is validated by comparing its predictions to experimental results, based on a robot constructed from piezoelectric layers bonded to a steel-foil substrate. The simulation framework exploits the physics engine PyBullet, and employs discrete rigid-link elements connected by motors to model the actuators. We perform static and AC analyses to validate a single-unit actuator cantilever setup and observe close agreement between simulation and experiments for both the cases. The analyses are extended to the five-actuator robot, where simulations accurately predict the static and AC robot motions, including shapes for applied DC voltage inputs, nearly-static "inchworm" motion, and jumping (in vertical as well as vertical and horizontal directions). These motions exhibit complex non-linear behavior, with forward robot motion reaching ~1 cm/s.
Single actuator cantilever oscillations
Robot in-place jumping
Rightward moving while jumping
![](images/web-cantilever.png)
Single-actuator cantilever frequency response
![](images/web-jumping.png)
Jumping height dependency on frequency
Paper
Latest version (Feb 28, 2022): arXiv:2202.13521 [cs.RO].
To appear at the 2022 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)
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Code
Code is available on Github. Includes:
• Simulation environments (SFERS with PyBullet).
• Training/testing code (with Python).
• Models and parameters.
Bibtex
doi = {10.48550/ARXIV.2202.13521},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2202.13521},
author = {Zheng, Zhiwu and Kumar, Prakhar and Chen, Yenan and Cheng, Hsin and Wagner, Sigurd and Chen, Minjie and Verma, Naveen and Sturm, James C.},
keywords = {Robotics (cs.RO), Systems and Control (eess.SY), FOS: Computer and information sciences, FOS: Computer and information sciences, FOS: Electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering, FOS: Electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering},
title = {Scalable Simulation and Demonstration of Jumping Piezoelectric 2-D Soft Robots},
publisher = {arXiv},
year = {2022},
copyright = {arXiv.org perpetual, non-exclusive license}
}
Team
![](images/people/prakhar.jpg)
Prakhar Kumar
![](images/people/yenan.jpeg)
Yenan Chen
![](images/people/hsin.jpg)
Hsin Cheng
![](images/people/sigurd.png)
Sigurd Wagner
![](images/PU-standard.png)
Summary Video
Link to the video
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC), DARPA, Princeton Program in Plasma Science and Technology, and Princeton University.
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