Collocated Shape Regulation for Soft Robots

Engineering notes

Engineering notes will be added by the Robot Papers editorial team.

Chinese explanation / 中文解读

中文解读待补充：本站会优先为 VLA、具身智能、人形机器人控制、机器人操作等高价值论文补充中文说明。

Original abstract

Controlling the shape of a continuum soft robot typically requires an accurate dynamic model and actuation of all degrees of freedom. We show that regulating only the actuated coordinates, through collocated shape control, achieves provably stable convergence of those coordinates and, under an explicit compatibility condition, of the entire robot shape. While collocated control is a cornerstone of high-performance motion control in rigid robotics, extending this formulation to continuum soft robots has remained challenging due to the complexity of their dynamics. We present the first general framework for collocated control of continuum soft robots and derive a unified family of controllers, including PD, PID, PsatID, and their counterparts with compensation and cancellation components. The framework unifies existing approaches while introducing new controller designs. In particular, we develop three classes of PD and PID like regulators with local, semi-global, and global stability guarantees, and provide rigorous convergence analyses for each. Extensive experimental validation demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed methods across different model discretizations and controller parameters. The resulting framework provides practical design guidelines for selecting and implementing controllers with known stability guarantees, without requiring a complete dynamic model of the robot

Links and sources

• Official / arXiv page
• PDF from original source

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