Abstract
Soft-robot designs are manifold, but only a few are publicly available. Often, these are only briefly described in their publications. This complicates reproduction, and hinders the reproducibility and comparability of research results. If the designs were uniform and open source, validating researched methods on real benchmark systems would be possible. To address this, we present two variants of a soft pneumatic robot with antagonistic bellows as open source. Starting from a semi-modular design with multiple cables and tubes routed through the robot body, the transition to a fully modular robot with integrated microvalves and serial communication is highlighted. Modularity in terms of stackability, actuation, and communication is achieved, which is the crucial requirement for building soft robots with many degrees of freedom and high dexterity for real-world tasks. Both systems are compared regarding their respective advantages and disadvantages. The robots' functionality is demonstrated in experiments on airtightness, gravitational influence, position control with mean tracking errors of <3 deg, and long-term operation of cast and printed bellows. All soft- and hardware files required for reproduction are provided.
Abstract (translated)
软机器人设计多种多样，但只有少数公开可用。通常，这些设计只是在发表文章时简要描述一下。这使得复制很复杂，同时也阻碍了研究结果的可重复性和可比性。如果设计是统一的且开源的，那么在实际基准系统上验证研究方法是可能的。为解决这个问题，我们提出了两个带有对抗性活塞的软气动机器人开源设计。设计从具有多个电缆和管道的半模块设计开始，重点转向具有集成微活塞和串行通信的全模块机器人。在软机器人，通过堆叠、执行和通信实现模块性，这是构建具有多自由度和高灵巧性的软机器人的关键要求。这两个系统在各自的优缺点方面进行了比较。我们通过测试空气密封性、重力影响、带有<3°平均跟踪误差的位置控制以及软管和打印活塞的长期操作，展示了机器人的功能性。所有用于复制的软硬件文件都提供。
URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.10734
