Controlling Soft Robots: Balancing Feedback and Feedforward Elements

Cosimo Della Santina, Matteo Bianchi, Giorgio Grioli, Franco Angelini, Manuel Catalano, Manolo Garabini, Antonio Bicchi

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

111 Scopus citations

Abstract

Soft robots (SRs) represent one of the most significant recent evolutions in robotics. Designed to embody safe and natural behaviors, they rely on compliant physical structures purposefully designed to embody desirable and sometimes variable impedance characteristics. This article discusses the problem of controlling SRs. We start by observing that most of the standard methods of robotic control-e.g., high-gain robust control, feedback linearization, backstepping, and active impedance control-effectively fight against or even completely cancel the physical dynamics of the system, replacing them with a desired model. This defeats the purpose of introducing physical compliance.

Original languageEnglish
Article number7930438
Pages (from-to)75-83
Number of pages9
JournalIEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine
Volume24
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 2017
Externally publishedYes

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