软体机械臂实现高速高精度控制,打破柔顺与性能不可兼得的误解。
Reconciling distributed compliance with high-performance control in continuum soft robotics
- 通过非刚性结构与耦合驱动设计,保留完整柔顺性。
- 毫秒级精度下执行速度提升近4倍,创软体机器人新纪录。
- 适合需要高动态响应的精密软体操作场景。
真正柔软的连续体机械臂实现高性能闭环控制仍具挑战。以往实验多依赖足够刚性的分段结构,使每个驱动段表现为分布但本质上刚性的单元,从而抑制除简单弯曲外的变形模式。该策略简化建模与控制,但回避了完全柔顺本体的内在复杂性,使系统行为类似传统串联关节机器人。由此社区形成隐含结论:分布式柔顺性与动态精度不可兼得。本文展示该权衡并非根本性限制。我们提出一种高度柔顺、全连续体的机械臂——无硬件离散化或基于刚度的模态抑制——在动态条件下实现快速精准的任务空间收敛。平台集成直接驱动、实现弯曲与扭转耦合的绳索布线方案,以及基于欠驱动系统降阶应变建模的非线性控制架构。建模、驱动与控制协同设计,在保持关键机械复杂性的同时实现高带宽闭环。实验表明,系统可准确重复执行动态笛卡尔任务,包括快速定位与交互。所提系统在软体机器人中达到最快报告的任务执行速度;在毫米级精度下,执行速度相较先前方法近乎提升四倍,且作用于完全柔顺的连续体上。结果证明,分布式柔顺性与高性能动态控制可共存,为接近刚体机器人操作能力的真正软体机械臂开辟路径,同时不牺牲形态丰富性。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
High-performance closed-loop control of truly soft continuum manipulators has remained elusive. Experimental demonstrations have largely relied on sufficiently stiff, piecewise architectures in which each actuated segment behaves as a distributed yet effectively rigid element, while deformation modes beyond simple bending are suppressed. This strategy simplifies modeling and control, but sidesteps the intrinsic complexity of a fully compliant body and makes the system behave as a serial kinematic chain, much like a conventional articulated robot. An implicit conclusion has consequently emerged within the community: distributed softness and dynamic precision are incompatible. Here we show this trade-off is not fundamental. We present a highly compliant, fully continuum robotic arm - without hardware discretization or stiffness-based mode suppression - that achieves fast, precise task-space convergence under dynamic conditions. The platform integrates direct-drive actuation, a tendon routing scheme enabling coupled bending and twisting, and a structured nonlinear control architecture grounded in reduced-order strain modeling of underactuated systems. Modeling, actuation, and control are co-designed to preserve essential mechanical complexity while enabling high-bandwidth loop closure. Experiments demonstrate accurate, repeatable execution of dynamic Cartesian tasks, including fast positioning and interaction. The proposed system achieves the fastest reported task-execution speed among soft robots. At millimetric precision, execution speed increases nearly fourfold compared with prior approaches, while operating on a fully compliant continuum body. These results show that distributed compliance and high-performance dynamic control can coexist, opening a path toward truly soft manipulators approaching the operational capabilities of rigid robots without sacrificing morphological richness.
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