提出新型规划框架,让吸盘软体机器人在复杂表面自主爬行。
FlexWorm: Primitive-augmented Hybrid Contact-motion Planning for Suction-based Multi-segment Deformable Robots

- 分块逆运动学混合搜索,仅对自由段求解,提升效率
- 模拟中成功率超基线,且在多种地形表现稳定
- 适合需要自适应抓附的复杂环境作业,如管道巡检
多段吸盘式软体机器人在狭窄或脆弱环境中具有广阔应用前景,但现有方法仍严重依赖人工设计步态和场景特定运动脚本。本文提出一种面向串联多段软体机器人的规划框架,支持可变形体段与边界吸盘,实现复杂表面的全3D导航。该框架显式处理离散吸附切换与连续形变,在几何、碰撞及拟静态可行性约束下运行,且不依赖具体驱动方式。核心为分块逆运动学混合搜索(IKHS),通过最佳优先搜索可行吸附转换,仅对诱导自由段求解逆运动学。在此基础上,引入基于学习的观察-动作嵌入(PaHS),检索已验证短段运动以快速生成局部提议,失败时回退至标准IKHS分支。仿真结果显示,该框架在不同地形上均显著优于受控基线,在规划成功率、转换质量与效率方面表现优异;PaHS在保持与IKHS相当成功率的同时,大幅降低规划时间。多次硬件实验在气动多段软体机器人上验证了其可执行性及在驱动与吸附不确定性下的在线恢复能力。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Multi-segment suction-based soft robots are promising for inspection and maintenance in confined or fragile environments, but existing approaches still depend heavily on manually designed gaits and environment-specific motion scripts. This work presents a planning framework for serial multi-segment soft robots with deformable body segments and boundary suction pads. The formulation targets full 3D navigation on complex surfaces and explicitly handles discrete adhesion switching and continuous body deformation under geometric, collision, and quasi-static feasibility constraints, while remaining agnostic to the specific actuation realization used to produce segment deformation. Its core, block-wise IK hybrid search (IKHS), performs best-first search over feasible adhesion transitions while solving inverse kinematics only on induced free blocks. On top of IKHS, primitive-augmented hybrid search (PaHS) uses a learned observation--primitive embedding to retrieve short validated motion segments for fast local proposal, with fallback to standard IKHS branching when retrieval fails. In simulation, the framework consistently outperforms controlled baselines in planning success, transition quality, and efficiency across diverse terrains. PaHS matches IKHS in success rate while substantially reducing planning time. Repeated hardware experiments on a pneumatic multi-segment soft robot further demonstrate executability and online recovery under actuation and adhesion uncertainty.
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