Open-loop Control of a Soft Arm in Throwing Tasks

Diego Bianchi, Diego Bianchi, Michele Antonelli, Cecilia Laschi, Egidio Falotico, Egidio Falotico

2022

Abstract

This paper presents the implementation of an open-loop controller that allows a soft arm to throw objects in target positions. This valuable ability enables the robotic arm to expand its working space by tossing the objects outside it. Soft robots are characterized by high compliance and flexibility, which is paid in terms of dynamics that is highly non-linear and therefore hard to be modelled. An artificial neural network is employed to approximate the relationship between the actuation set and the target landing position, i.e., the direct model of the task. An optimization problem is defined to find the actuation set necessary to throw in a desired target. The proposed methodology has been tested on a soft robotic simulator (Elastica). Results show that the open-loop controller allows throwing objects in a target position with an average error of 0.90 mm and a maximum error of 10.47 mm, which compared to the characteristic dimension of the work-space correspond respectively to 0.07 % and 0.83 %.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Bianchi D., Antonelli M., Laschi C. and Falotico E. (2022). Open-loop Control of a Soft Arm in Throwing Tasks. In Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics - Volume 1: ICINCO, ISBN 978-989-758-585-2, pages 138-145. DOI: 10.5220/0011267100003271

in Bibtex Style

@conference{icinco22,
author={Diego Bianchi and Michele Antonelli and Cecilia Laschi and Egidio Falotico},
title={Open-loop Control of a Soft Arm in Throwing Tasks},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics - Volume 1: ICINCO,},
year={2022},
pages={138-145},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0011267100003271},
isbn={978-989-758-585-2},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics - Volume 1: ICINCO,
TI - Open-loop Control of a Soft Arm in Throwing Tasks
SN - 978-989-758-585-2
AU - Bianchi D.
AU - Antonelli M.
AU - Laschi C.
AU - Falotico E.
PY - 2022
SP - 138
EP - 145
DO - 10.5220/0011267100003271