A precise embedded curvature sensor module for soft-bodied robots

Özel, Selim; Keskin, Nehir A.; Khea, Darien; Önal, Çağdaş D.

doi:10.1016/j.sna.2015.09.041

Cited by 103 publications

(58 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…A conventional optical flexure sensor has been implemented in a tendon‐driven compliant gripper . Embedding small magnets in an elastomer a few mm above a two or three axis Hall sensor or matrix of Hall sensors allows the measurement of normal and shear force, allowing both tactile sensing as well as use in closed‐loop control. The method is fast, and has low hysteresis.…”

Section: Sensing Technologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Soft Robotic Grippers

et al. 2018

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Advances in soft robotics, materials science, and stretchable electronics have enabled rapid progress in soft grippers. Here, a critical overview of soft robotic grippers is presented, covering different material sets, physical principles, and device architectures. Soft gripping can be categorized into three technologies, enabling grasping by: a) actuation, b) controlled stiffness, and c) controlled adhesion. A comprehensive review of each type is presented. Compared to rigid grippers, end-effectors fabricated from flexible and soft components can often grasp or manipulate a larger variety of objects. Such grippers are an example of morphological computation, where control complexity is greatly reduced by material softness and mechanical compliance. Advanced materials and soft components, in particular silicone elastomers, shape memory materials, and active polymers and gels, are increasingly investigated for the design of lighter, simpler, and more universal grippers, using the inherent functionality of the materials. Embedding stretchable distributed sensors in or on soft grippers greatly enhances the ways in which the grippers interact with objects. Challenges for soft grippers include miniaturization, robustness, speed, integration of sensing, and control. Improved materials, processing methods, and sensing play an important role in future research.

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Section: Sensing Technologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Soft Robotic Grippers

et al. 2018

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“…To show that this approach is suitable for actual implementation, we present results of a simulation in Figure 3. A more detailed discussion about this curvature sensing approach and experimental analysis of its response is provided in [21].…”

Section: B Sensingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We recently presented a soft bodied magnetic curvature sensor [21]. With a magnetic operational principle, this sensor is capable of accurately measuring curvature at a high bandwidth.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A composite soft bending actuation module with integrated curvature sensing

Özel

Skorina

Luo

et al. 2016

2016 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)

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Soft robotics carries the promise of making robots as capable and adaptable as biological creatures, but this will not be possible without the ability to perform self-sensing and control with precision and repeatability. In this paper, we seek to address this need with the development of a new pneumatically-actuated soft bending actuation module with integrated curvature sensing. We designed and fabricated two different versions of this module: One with a commercially available resistive flex sensor and the other with a magnetic curvature sensor of our own design, and used an external motion capture system to calibrate and validate these two approaches. In addition, we used an iterative sliding mode controller to drive the modules through step curvature references to demonstrate the controllability of the modules as well as compare the usability of the two sensors. We found that the magnetic sensor returned noisy but accurate data, while the flex sensor had minor inaccuracies and it was subject to overshoot but did not exhibit notable noise. Experimental results show that this phenomenon of overshoot from the flex sensor causes active feedback control of the bending actuator to exhibit significant positioning errors. This work demonstrates that our soft bending actuator can be controlled with repeatability and precision, and that our magnetic curvature sensor represents an improvement for use in proprioception and closed-loop control of soft robotic devices.

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“…24 Two versions of these sensors are demonstrated in Figure 3. This approach utilizes our custom flexible circuit fabrication technology to achieve non-contact magnetic field measurement due to the relative motion of the magnet with respect to the Hall element, to detect the corresponding curvature of a bending segment ( (Figure 3-D), where the displacement waveform and the magnetic sensor response agree, evidencing the feasibility of the proposed approach.…”

Section: Sensing: Magnetic Deformation Measurement In a Flexible Elasmentioning

confidence: 99%

System-level challenges in pressure-operated soft robotics

Önal

2016

SPIE Proceedings

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Last decade witnessed the revival of fluidic soft actuation. As pressure-operated soft robotics becomes more popular with promising recent results, system integration remains an outstanding challenge. Inspired greatly by biology, we envision future robotic systems to embrace mechanical compliance with bodies composed of soft and hard components as well as electronic and sensing sub-systems, such that robot maintenance starts to resemble surgery. In this vision, portable energy sources and driving infrastructure plays a key role to offer autonomous many-DoF soft actuation. On the other hand, while offering many advantages in safety and adaptability to interact with unstructured environments, objects, and human bodies, mechanical compliance also violates many inherent assumptions in traditional rigid-body robotics. Thus, a complete soft robotic system requires new approaches to utilize proprioception that provides rich sensory information while remaining flexible, and motion control under significant time delay. This paper discusses our proposed solutions for each of these system-level challenges in soft robotics research.

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A precise embedded curvature sensor module for soft-bodied robots

Cited by 103 publications

References 11 publications

Soft Robotic Grippers

Soft Robotic Grippers

A composite soft bending actuation module with integrated curvature sensing

System-level challenges in pressure-operated soft robotics

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