PneuDrive: An Embedded Pressure Control System and Modeling Toolkit for Large-Scale Soft Robots
Year: 2024
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: In this paper, we present a modular pressure control system called PneuDrive that can be used for large-scale, pneumatically-actuated soft robots. The design is particularly suited for situations which require distributed pressure control and high flow rates. Up to four embedded pressure control modules can be daisy-chained together as peripherals on a robust RS-485 bus, enabling closed-loop control of up to 16 valves with pressures ranging from 0–100 psig (0–689 kPa) over distances of more than 10 meters. The system is configured as a C++ Ros node by default. However, independent of ROS, we provide a Python interface with a scripting API for added flexibility. We demonstrate our implementation of PneuDrive through various trajectory tracking experiments for a three-joint, continuum soft robot with 12 different pressure inputs. Finally, we present a modeling toolkit with implementations of three dynamic actuation models, all suitable for real-time simulation and control. We demonstrate the use of this toolkit in customizing each model with real-world data and evaluating the performance of each model. The results serve as a reference guide for choosing between several actuation models in a principled manner. A video summarizing our results can be found here: https://bit.ly/3QkrEqO.
Authors: Curtis C. Johnson, Daniel G. Cheney, Dallin L. Cordon, Marc D. Killpack
Institution: Brigham Young University
Language: English
Subfield: Biomedical Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: National Science Foundation
OpenAlex ID: W4396853352